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Book 


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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 


V 




ROSE OF BUTCHER’S COOLLY 


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Rose of Butcher’s 



By 

HAMLIN GARLAND 


Author of 

Main Travelled Roads 
Prairie Folks 

Boy Life on the Prairie, etc. 


New York 

The Macmillan Company 

London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 
1899 







> 




Copyright, 1895, 

By HAMLIN GARLAND. 


Copyright, 1899, 

By HAMLIN GARLAND. 

TWO COPiha -iC~IVEO, 



Norwood Press 

y. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick Smith 
Norwood^ Mass.y U.S.A. 


X.b'ilS- 



o 


Contents 


CHAPTER 

I. 

Her Childhood 




PAGE 

I 

II. 

Child-Life, Pagan- Free 




I 2 

III. 

Dangerous Days 




i8 

IV. 

An Opening Clover Bloom 




22 

V. 

Her First Peril 




27 

VI. 

Her First Ideal 




34 

VII. 

Rose Meets Dr. Thatcher . 




55 

VIII. 

Leaving Home . 




70 

IX. 

Rose Enters Madison 




82 

X. 

Quiet Years of Growth 




97 

XI. 

Study of the Stars 




102 

XII. 

The Gates Open Wide 





XIII. 

The Woman ^s Part . 




132 

XIV. 

Again the Question of Home-Leaving 



H 7 

XV. 

Chicago . . 




155 

XVI. 

Her First Conquest . 




167 

XVII. 

Her First Dinner Out 




194 

XVIII. 

Mason Talks on Marriage . 

V 




216 


vi 

Contents 



CHAPTER 

XIX. 

Rose Sits in the Blaze of a Thousand Eyes 

PAGE 

. 223 

XX. 

Rose Sets Face toward the Open 

Road . 

. 244 

XXI. 

Mason Talks Again . 


. 265 

XXII. 

Social Questions 


. 280 

XXIII. 

A Storm and a Helmsman . 


. 291 

XXIV. 

Mason Takes a Vacation 


• 3 H 

XXV. 

Rose Receives a Letter 


• 325 

XXVI. 

Mason as a Lover 


• 338 

Conclusion ; The Wind in the Tree-tops 


00 


ROSE OF DUTCHER’S COOLLY 


CHAPTER I 

HER CHILDHOOD 

Rose was an unaccountable child from the start. 
She learned to speak early, and while she did not use 
‘‘baby-talk” she had strange words of her own. She 
called hard money “tow” and a picture “tac,” names 
which had nothing to do with onomatopoeia, though it 
seemed so in some cases. Bread and milk she called 
“ plop.” 

She began to read of her own accord when four years 
old, picking out the letters from the advertisements of 
the newspapers, and running to her mother at the sink 
or bread-board to learn what each word meant. Her 
demand for stories grew to be a burden. She was in- 
satiate, nothing but sleep subdued her eager brain. 

As she grew older she read and re-read her picture- 
books when alone, but when older people were talking 
she listened as attentively as if she understood every 
word. She had the power of amusing herself and visited 
very little with other children. It was deeply moving to 
see her with her poor playthings out under the poplar- 


2 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


tree, talking to herself, arranging and re-arranging her 
chairs and tables, the sunlight flecking her hair, and the 
birds singing overhead. 

She seemed only a larger sort of insect, and her prattle 
mixed easily with the chirp of crickets and the rustle of 
leaves. 

She was only five years old when her mother suddenly 
withdrew her hands from pans and kettles, gave up all 
thought of bread and butter making, and took rest in 
death. Only a few hours of waiting on her bed near 
the kitchen fire and Ann Butcher was through with toil 
and troubled dreaming, and lay in the dim best-room, 
taking no account of anything in the light of day. 

Rose got up the next morning after her mother’s last 
kiss and went into the room where the body lay. A 
gnomish little figure the child was, for at that time her 
head was large and her cropped hair bristled till she 
seemed a sort of brownie. Also, her lonely child-life had 
given her quaint, grave ways. 

She knew her mother was dead, and that death was a 
kind of sleep which lasted longer than common sleep, 
that was all the difference ; so she went in and stood by 
the bed and tried to see her mother’s face. It was early 
in the morning, and the curtains being drawn it was dark 
in the room; but Rose had no fear, for mother was 
there. 

She talked softly to herself a little while, then went 
over to the window and pulled on the string of the curtain 
till it rolled up. Then she went back and looked at her 
mother. She grew tired of waiting at last. 


Her Childhood 


3 

“ Mamma,” she called, “ wake up. Can^t you wake 
up, mamma ? ” 

She patted the cold, rigid cheeks with her rough brown 
little palms. Then she blew in the dead face, gravely. 
Then she thought if she could only open mamma’s eyes 
she’d be awake. So she took her finger and thumb and 
tried to lift the lashes, and when she did she was fright- 
ened by the look of the set faded gray eyes. Then the 
terrible vague shadow of the Unknown settled upon her 
and she cried convulsively : “ Mamma ! mamma, I want 
you ! ” Thus she met death, early in her life. 

After her mother’s burial Rose turned to her father 
more hungrily than before. She rode into the fields 
with him in the spring, when he went out to sow, 
sitting on the seeder box with the pockets of her little 
pink apron filled with wheat, and her sweet, piping 
little voice calling to the horses or laughing in glee at 
the swarms of sparrows. When he was ploughing corn 
she rode on the horses, clinging like a blue-jay to the 
rings in the back-pad, her yellow-brown hair blowing. 

She talked sagely about the crops and the weather, 
and asked innumerable questions. Often John could 
not hear her questions, which were like soft soliloquies, 
but she babbled on just the same. 

“See the little birds, pappa John. They’s ’bout a 
million of ’urn, ain’t they ? They’re glad spring has 
come, ain’t they, pappa ? They can understand each 
other just the same as we can, can’t they, pappa 
John ? ” 

John Dutcher was not a talker, and he seldom 


4 


Rose of Butcher s Coolly 


answered her unless she turned her eager face to him, 
and her bird-like voice repeated her question. But it 
mattered very little to Rose. She had her father’s power 
of self-amusement. In case she got tired of riding about 
with him she brought her playthings out and established 
them in a corner of the fence. Her favorite game was 
“ playing horses.” 

Her horses were sticks of the size of canes, and of 
all sorts and colors. Each one had a name. How she 
selected them, and why she selected them out of the 
vast world of sticks, was a mystery to John Butcher. 

The brown stick she called Dan, the fork-handle, 
Nellie, and 'the crooked stick with the big knot was 
Barney. She had from six to ten, and she never forgot 
their names. Each had a string for a bridle and they 
were all placed in stalls, which she built with infinite 
labor and calculation out of twigs. She led each stick 
by its halter up to the manger — a rail — on which she 
had placed oats and grass. She talked to them. 

‘‘ Now, Barney, whoa-whoa there now ! Don’t you 
kick Kit again — now, sir ! Kit, you better stand over 
here by Pete — Barney, you need exercise, that’s what 
you need, — yessir.” 

She exercised them by riding them in plunging circles 
about the fields, forgetting, with the quick imagination 
of a child, that she was doing all the hard work of 
the riding with her own stout, brown legs. It was a 
pleasure to John to have her there, though he said little 
to her. 

Often at night as he saw her lying asleep, her long 


Her Childhood 


5 


lashes upon her roughened sun-burned skin, his heart 
went out to her in a great throb of tenderness. His 
throat ached and his eyes grew wet as he thought how 
unresponsive he had been that day. His remorseful 
memory went back over her eager questions to which 
he had not replied. Dear, sweet, restless little heart ! 
And then he vowed never to lose patience with her 
again. And sometimes, standing there beside her bed, 
his arms closed about the little mound under the quilts, 
and his lips touched the round, sleep-enraptured face. 
At such times his needy soul lifted a cry to his dead 
wife for help to care for his child. 

He grew afraid of the mystery and danger of coming 
womanhood. Her needs came to him more powerfully 
each day. 

When she began going to school with the other 
children the effects of her lonely life and of her com- 
panionship with her father set her apart from the boys 
and girls of her own age and placed her among those 
several years older, whom she dominated by her gravity 
and her audacity. She was not mischievous or quarrel- 
some, but she was a fearless investigator. She tested 
their childish superstitions at once. 

When they told her that if she swore at God and 
shook her fist at the sky she would certainly drop dead, 
she calmly stepped forward and shook her little fist up 
at the sun and swore, while the awe-stricken children 
cowered like a covey of partridges. 

“ There ! you see thaf s a lie,’’ she said, scornfully. 
“ God can’t kill me — or else He don’t care.” 


6 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


She went on exploding these strange superstitious 
fancies, which are only the survivals in civilized children 
of savage ancestry. She stood erect in the door of the 
school-house when she was eight years old, and pointed 
her hand at the lightning while the teacher sat cowed 
and weeping at her desk. 

“ You said I dassn’t,” the little elf cried. “ But I 
dass’t, and nothing ain't struck me yet.” 

Her absolute fearlessness of the things which children 
shrank from, the dark, and things of the dark, made her 
a marked figure. The women of the Coolly thought it 
due to the lack of a mother's care. They spoke to the 
minister about it and urged him to see Butcher and ask 
him to try and do something for the child's good. 

But Butcher simply said : “ Oh, don't bother the 
child about her soul. She's all right. I don't bother 
myself about those things, and what's the use o' spoilin' 
the child's fun ? If she wants to go to Sunday-school, 
why all right. She’ll go where she's interested.” 

“ But, Brother Butcher, the child is doing outrageous 
things — heathenish, defying her God.” 

“ I don't s’pose what she does will make any particu- 
lar difference to God. We understand each other, Rosie 
and me. Bon’t worry. If she does anything real bad 
she’ll come and tell me of it. Chk! Chk! G’wan, 
Barney ! ” He cut the matter short by driving away 
into the field of corn. 

He saw rushing upon him the most solemn and severe 
trials of a parent. Rose was a sturdy child and prom- 
ised to develop into a maiden early, and there were a 


Her Childhood 


7 

hundred things which ought to be said to her which 
must be said by someone. He was not philosopher 
enough to know that she held in her expanding brain the 
germs of self-knowledge. 

He had been passing through a running fire of questions 
from the child for two years, but these questions now 
took hold of deeper things, and they could no longer be 
put aside by saying, “ Wait a few years and then I’ll tell 
you. ” She would learn them elsewhere, if not from 
him. He braced himself for the trial, which increased 
in severity. 

The child’s horizon was limited, but within its circle 
her searching eyes let nothing escape. She came to 
Dutcher with appalling questions. 

She not only asked him, “ Who made God ? ” but she 
wanted to know how she came to be born, and a thou- 
sand other questions of the same searching nature. He 
saw that the day of petty fictions had gone by. The 
child knew that little lambs, and calves, and kittens did 
not grow down in the woods. She knew that babies 
were not brought by the doctor, and that they did not 
come from heaven. 

“ Good Lord ! ” groaned her father one day, after an 
unusually persistent attack from her, caused by the ap- 
pearance of a little colt out in the barn, “ I wish your 
mother was here, or some woman. You do make it 
hard for me, Rosie. ” 

“ How do I make it hard for you, pappa } ” was her 
quick new question. “ O Lord, what a young un, ” he 
said, in deeper despair. “ Come, ain’t it about time 


8 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

for you to be leggin’ it toward school ? Give me 
a rest, Rosie. But I’ll answer all your questions — 
don’t ask about them things of the children — come 
right to me always — only don’t pile ’em all on me 
to once.” 

“ All right, pappa, I won’t.” 

« That’s a good old soul ! ” he said, patting her on 
the back. After she had gone he sat down on the feed- 
box and wiped his face. ‘‘I wonder how women do 
explain things like that to girls,” he thought. “ I’ll ask 
the preacher’s wife to explain it — no, I won’t. I’ll do 
it myself, and I’ll get her books to read about it — good 
books.” 

It was evidence of the girl’s innate strength and 
purity of soul that the long succession of hired hands 
had not poisoned her mind. They soon discovered, 
however, the complete confidence between the father 
and child, and knew that their words and actions would 
be taken straight to John as soon as night came and 
Rose climbed into his lap. This made them careful 
before her, and the shame of their words and stories 
came to the child’s ears only in fragments. 

Butcher concluded that he should have a woman in 
the house, and so sent back to Pennsylvania for his 
sister, lately widowed. Rose looked forward to seeing 
her aunt with the wildest delight. She went with her 
father down the valley to Bluff Siding to meet her. 
Bluff Siding was the only town the child knew, and it 
was a wonderful thing to go to town. 

As they stood on the platform, waiting, her eyes 


Her Childhood 


9 


swept along the great curve of the rails to the east, and 
suddenly, like a pain in the heart, came her first realiza- 
tion of distance, of the infinity of the world. 

“ Where does it go to, pappa ? ” 

“ Oh, a long way off. To Madison, Chicago, and 
Pennsylvany.” 

“ How far is it ? Could we go there with old 
Barney and Nell ? ” 

“ Oh, no. If we drove there it would take us 
days and days, and the wheat would grow up and get 
yellow, an' the snow come, almost, before we’d get 
there.” 

“ Oh, dear ! ” she sighed. “ I don’t like to have it 
so big. Do people live all along the whole way ? ” 

“ Yes, the whole way, and lots of big cities.” 

“ Big as Madison ? ” Madison was her unseen meas- 
ure of greatness. 

“ Oh, yes. A hundred times bigger.” 

She sighed again and looked away to the east with a 
strange, unchildish, set stare in her eyes. She was try- 
ing to realize it. 

“ It makes me ache, pappa,” she sighed, putting her 
little brown hand to her throat. 

When the engine came in with its thunder and 
whiz, she shrank back against the station wall, white 
and breathless, not so much with fear as with awe. 
She had never stood so close to this monster before. 
It attracted all her attention, so that for the moment 
she forgot about the coming of her aunt. 

When she looked into the large, dull face of Mrs. 


lo Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

Diehl she was deeply disappointed. She liked her, but 
she did not love her! 

She had looked forward to her coming almost as if to 
the return of her mother. She had imagined her look- 
ing strange and beautiful because she came out of the 
mystical, far-off land her father often spoke of. In- 
stead, of these things Mrs. Diehl was a strong-featured, 
mild-voiced woman, rather large and ungraceful, who 
looked upon the motherless child and clicked her tongue. 
‘‘You poor chick ! ” 

But the thing which had happened was this : Rose 
had conceived of distance and great cities. 

The next day she said : “ Pappa John, I want to go 
way up on the bluffs. I want to go up to Table Rock 
where I can see way, way off.” 

“ It’s a long climb up there, Rosie. You’ll get 
tired.” 

But Rosie insisted, and together they climbed the 
hill. Up beyond the pasture — beyond the blackberry 
patch — beyond the clinging birches in their white 
jackets — up where the rocks cropped out of the ground 
and where curious little wave-worn pebbles lay scattered 
on the scant grass. 

Once a glittering rattlesnake lying in the sun awoke, 
and slipped under a stone like a stream of golden oil, 
and the child shrank against her father’s thigh in horror. 

They climbed slowly up the steep grassy slope and 
stood n last on the flat rock which topped the bluff. 
Rose stood there, dizzy, out of breath, with her hair 
blown across her cheek, and looked away at the curving 


Her Childhood 


1 1 

valley and its river gleaming here and there through the 
willows and alders. It was like looking over an unex- 
plored world to the child. Her eyes expanded and her 
heart filled with the same ache which came into it 
when she looked down along the curving railway-track. 
She turned suddenly and fell sobbing against her father. 

“Why, Rosie, what’s the matter.? Poor little girl — 
she’s all tired out, climbin’ up here.” He sat down 
and took her on his lap and talked to her of the valley 
below and where the river went — but she would not 
look up again. 

“ I want to go home,” she said with hidden face. 

On the way down, John rolled a big stone down the 
hill, and as it went bounding, crashing into the forest 
below, a deer drifted out like a gray shadow and swept 
along the hillside and over the ridge. 

Rose saw it as if in a dream. She did not laugh nor 
shout. John was troubled by her silence and gravity, 
but laid it to weariness and took her pickaback on the 
last half mile through the brush. 

That scene came to her mind again and again in the 
days which followed, but she did not see it again till the 
following spring. It appealed to her with less power 
then. Its beauty overshadowed its oppressive largeness. 
As she grew older it came to be her favorite playing 
ground on holidays. She brought down those quaint lit- 
tle bits of limestone and made them her playthings in 
her house, which was next door to her barn — and sec- 
ondary to her barn. 


CHAPTER II 


CHILD-LIFE, PAGAN-FREE 

Rose lived the life of the farm-girls in the seven 
great Middle-West States. In summer she patted away 
to school, clad only in a gingham dress, white, un- 
trimmed cotton pantalets, and a straw hat that was 
made feminine by a band of gay ribbon. Her body was 
as untrammelled as a boy’s. She went bare-footed and 
bare-headed at will, and she was part of all the 
sports. 

She helped the boys snare gophers, on the way to 
school, and played house with the girls on the shady 
side of the school-house ; and once, while the teacher 
was absent at noon. Rose proposed that a fire be built to 
heat the tea for the dolls. 

She it was who constructed the stove out of thin 
bricks, and set a fire going in it in the corner of the 
boys’ entryway, and only the passing of a farmer saved 
the building from disaster. 

She it was who found the ground-bird’s nest and pro- 
posed to make a house over it, and ended by teaching 
the bird to walk through a long hallway made of sticks, 
in order to get to its eggs again. 

12 


She despised hats and very seldom wore hers, except 
hanging by the string down her back. Her face was 
brown and red as leather, and her stout little hands were 
always covered with warts and good brown earth, which 
had no terrors for her. 

Bugs and beetles did not scare her any more than 
they did the boys. She watched the beetles bury a dead 
gopher without the slightest repugnance ; indeed, she 
turned to, after a long time, to help them, a kindness 
which they very probably resented, to judge from their 
scrambling. 

She always urged the other girls to go down to the 
creek and see the boys go in swimming, and would have 
joined the fun had not the boys driven her back with 
handfuls of mud, while they uttered opprobrious cries. 
She saw no reason why boys should have all the 
fun. 

When the days were hot they could go down there in 
the cool, nice creek, strip and have a good time, but 
girls must primp around and try to keep nice and clean. 
She looked longingly at the naked little savages running 
about and splashing in the water. There was some- 
thing so fine and joyous in it, her childish heart rebelled 
at sex-distinction as she walked slowly away. She, 
too, loved the feel of the water and the caress of the 
wind. 

She was a good student, and developed early into a 
wonderful speller and reader. She always listened to the 
classes in reading, and long before she reached the pieces 
herself she knew them by heart, and said them to her- 


14 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


self in the silence of the lane or the loneliness of the 
garret. She recited “The Battle of Waterloo” and 
“ Lochiel ” long before she understood the words. The 
roll of the verse excited her, and she thrust her nut of a 
fist into the air like Miriam the Hebrew singer, feeling 
vaguely the same passion. 

She went from Primer to First Reader, then to the 
Second and Third Readers, without effort. She read 
easily and dramatically. She caught at the larger mean- 
ings, and uttered them in such wise that the older pupils 
stopped their study to listen. 

Scraps and fragments of her reading took curious 
lodgment in her mind. New conceptions burst into 
her consciousness with a golden glory upon reading 
these lines : 


'‘Field of wheat so full and fair. 

Shining with a sunny air; 

Lightly swaying either way. 

Graceful as the breezes swayP* 

They made her see the beauty of the grain-field as 
never before. It seemed to be lit by some mysterious 
light. 

“ Cleon hath a million acres. 

Ne’er a one have I,” 

seemed to express something immemorial and grand. 
She seemed to see hills stretching to vast distances, 
covered with cattle. “The pied frog’s orchestra” came 
to her with sudden conscious meaning as she sat on the 


Child- Life, Pagan-Free 15 

door-step one night eating her bowl of bread and milk, 
and watching the stars come out. These fragments of 
literature expressed the poetry of certain things about 
her, and helped her also to perceive others. 

She was a daring swinger, and used to swing furi- 
ously out under the maple-trees, hoping to some day 
touch the branches high up there, and, when her com- 
panions gathered in little clumps in dismayed consulta- 
tion, she swung with wild hair floating free, a sort of 
intoxication of delight in her heart. 

Sometimes when alone she slipped off her clothes and 
ran amid the tall corn-stalks like a wild thing. Her 
slim little brown body slid among the leaves like a weasel 
in the grass. Some secret, strange delight, drawn from 
ancestral sources, bubbled over from her pounding heart, 
and she ran and ran until wearied and sore with the 
rasping corn-leaves, then she sadly put on civilized dress 
once more. 

Her feet were brown as toads, but graceful and small, 
and she washed them (when the dew was heavy enough) 
by running in the wet grass just before going into bed, a 
trick the boys of the neighborhood had taught her. She 
ran forward to clean the insteps and backward to clean 
the heels. If the grass was not wet, she omitted the 
ceremony. Dust was clean anyhow. Her night-gowns 
were of a most sorry pattern till her aunt came; there- 
after they were clean, though it mattered little. They 
were a nuisance to her. 

She wore a pink sun-bonnet, when she could find 
one ; generally there were two or three hanging on the 


1 6 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

fences at remote places. She sat down in the middle of 
the road, because she had a lizard’s liking for the warm, 
soft dust, and she paddled in every pool and plunged her 
hand into every puddle after frogs and bugs and worms, 
with the action of a crane. 

She ate everything that boys did. That is to say, she 
ate sheep-sorrel, Indian tobacco, roots of ferns, May- 
apples, rose-leaves, rose-buds, raw turnips, choke-cher- 
ries, wild crab-apples, slippery-elm bark, and the green 
balls on young oak-trees, as well as the bitter acorns. 
These acorns she chewed into pats and dried in the sun, 
to eat at other times, like a savage. 

She ate pinks and grass blades, and green watermelons, 
and ground cherries, and blackhaws, and dewberries, and 
every other conceivable thing in the woods and fields, 
not to mention the score of things which she tried and 
spit out. She became inured to poison-ivy like the boys, 
and walked the forest paths without fear of anything but 
snakes. 

Summer was one continuous and busy playspell for 
her in those days before her lessons became a serious 
thing, for as she sat in school she was experimenting in 
the same way. She chewed paper into balls and snapped 
them like the boys. She carried slips of elm bark to 
chew also, and slate-pencils she crunched daily. She 
gnawed the corners of her slate, tasted her ink, and 
munched the cedar of her pencil. 

And through it all she grew tall and straight and 
brown. She could run like a partridge and fight like a 
wild-cat, at need. Her brown-black eyes shone in her 


17 


Child- Life, Pagan-Free 

dark warm skin with an eager light, and her calloused 
little claws of hands reached and took hold of all realities. 

The boys respected her as a girl who wasn’t afraid 
of bugs, and who could run, and throw a ball. Above 
all she was strong and well. 


CHAPTER III 


DANGEROUS DAYS 

A farmer’s daughter is exposed to sights and sounds 
which the city girl knows nothing of. Mysterious pro- 
cesses of generation and birth go on before the eyes of 
the farm child, which only come as obscure whisperings 
to the city child of the same middle condition. And 
these happenings have a terrifying power to stir and 
develop passions prematurely. 

Rose heard occasionally obscene words among the 
hands. She listened unperceived to the vulgar cack- 
ling of old women during afternoon calls. Before her 
eyes, from the time of her toddling youth, had proceeded 
the drama of animal life. She had seen it all — court- 
ship, birth, death. Nothing escaped her keen, searching, 
inquisitive eyes. She asked her father about these dra- 
matic and furious episodes of the barn-yard, but he put 
her off, and she finally ceased to ask about them. She 
began to perceive they were considered of that obscure 
and unmentionable world of sin, with which men alone 
had proper right to deal. 

When the girls of her age in the grasp of some gale 
of passion, danced about her shouting foul words in the 

i8 

\ 


Dangerous Days 


19 


unknowing way children have, she did not take part by 
word of mouth, though she felt the same savage, frenzied 
delight in it. 

She learned early the signs which pass in the country 
to describe the unnamable and covert things of human 
life. She saw them scrawled on the fences, on school- 
house doors, and written on the dust of the road. There 
was no escaping them. The apparently shameful fact 
of sex faced her everywhere. 

And yet through it all she lived a glad, free, whole- 
some life. Her blood was sweet and swift and kept off 
contagion. Her brown skin flushed with its unhindered 
current. She dipped into this obscure, questionable 
world only momentarily, and came back to her father 
wholesome and happy, except occasionally when some 
outrageous gesture or word had stricken her into weeping. 

Then her father told her not to mind ; just be good 
and sweet herself, and it would help the others to be 
good too. He blundered sometimes and struggled for 
words, and talked in grotesque riddles, but she under- 
stood his meaning some way and was comforted. 

She did not go to her aunt with her doubts and fears 
for she had heard her say coarse words. Pappa John was 
her hero and guide. She went to him as naturally as to 
a mother. It was a noble thing for him to achieve, but 
he did not know it, and had not sought it. It was 
indeed thrust upon him. He would gladly have escaped 
from this part of her education, but as Rose refused 
to listen to anyone else, John puzzled and disturbed 
continued to be her timorous guide as a matter of need. 


20 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


He could not understand her quick perception — 
something seemed to rise in the child to help him 
explain. Germs of latent perception appeared to spring 
up like a conjuror’s magic seed, here a kernel, there a 
tree. One by one obscure ideas rose from the deep like 
bubbles, and burst into thought in her conscious self. 
A hint organized in her brain long trains of sequen- 
tial conceptions, which she had inherited with her sex. 
She did not require teaching on the most fundamental 
problems of her nature. 

She began to work early, but her work, like her play- 
ing, was not that of other girls. As she never played 
with dolls, caring more for hobby-horses, so she early 
learned to do work in the barn. From taking care of 
make-believe stick horses she came easily to taking care 
of real horses. 

When a toddling babe she had moved about under the 
huge plough-horses in their stalls, putting straw about 
them, and patting ^their columnar limbs with her little 
pads of palms, talking to them meanwhile in soft, 
indefinite gurgle of love and command. 

She knew how much hay and oats they needed, and 
she learned early to curry them, though they resented 
her first trials with the comb. She cared less for the 
cows and pigs, but before she was ten she could milk 
the “easy” cows. She liked the chickens, and it was 
part of her daily duty to feed the hens and gather the 
eggs. 

She could use a fork in the barn deftly as a boy by 
the time she was twelve, and in stacking times she 


Dangerous Days 


21 


handed bundles across the stack to her father. It was 
the variety of work, perhaps, which prevented her from 
acquiring that pathetic and lamentable stoop (or crook) 
in the shoulders and back which many country girls 
have in varying degree. 

All things tended to make her powerful, lithe, and 
erect. The naked facts of nature were hers to com- 
mand. She touched undisguised and unrefined nature 
at all points. Her feet met not merely soil, but mud. 
Her hands smelled of the barn-yard as well as of the 
flowers of the wild places of wood and meadow. 

Meanwhile her comradeship was sweet to John 
Dutcher. He hardly knew his loss of a son, so com- 
pletely was he companioned by Rose. He had put 
far away the time when she should wear shoes and long 
dresses and become a “ young lady.” 

“ Let her be, as long as you can,” he said to his 
sister. “ She’s a mighty comfort to me now, and she’s 
happy ; don’t disturb her ; time to wear long dresses 
and corsets’ll come soon enough without hurryin’ 
things.” 


CHAPTER IV 


AN OPENING CLOVER BLOOM 

There are times in a child’s life when it leaps sud- 
denly into larger growth as the imprisoned bud blooms 
larger than its promise, when the green fist of its 
straining calyx loosens in the warm glow of a May 
morning. Knowledge comes to the child, especially all 
the subtler knowledge of time, of space, of love, in a 
vague, indefinite, unconscious way, developing out of 
the child’s organic self precisely as the flower blooms. 

This knowledge comes to definite knowledge for an 
instant only and then returns to the sub-conscious, 
waiting the next day of warm sun, shining water, and 
smell of spring. Each time it stays longer, till at last 
the child can contemplate its own thought and finally 
express it. These times form real epochs in human 
life. 

One day in June, a party of the school-children, with 
flashing tin pails and willow baskets, went up into the 
woods after the wild-wood strawberries. It was late 
June, and the strawberries of the meadows and uplands 
were nearly gone. The roads were dusty, the pastures 
close-clipped. 


22 


An Opening Clover Bloom 23 

Merry, bare-footed little creatures ! They started 
forth in the early morning while the dew still flamed on 
the clover-leaves, and around each corn-hill the ground 
was still moist. The girls romped and picked wild 
flowers, the boys threw stones at the chipmunks on the 
fence, and tossed their tin pails in the air, performing 
feats of deftness in imitation of the circus-men, whom 
they bad once seen on the green at Tyre. 

They entered the forest and kept on up the wood- 
road until it seemed as if they were explorers. They 
had the delicious, tremulous feeling of having penetrated 
into the primeval, where nothing but the birds and 
animals lived. On past cool deeps of poplar, where 
the mandrake grew, and the sweet fern spread its mag- 
nificent leaves. On until the strawberries appeared, 
growing in clumps on long swaying stems, pale-scarlet 
globes of delicious tartness. 

They fell to work mostly in pairs. Curly haired 
Carl kept with Rose, and his sharp eyes and knowledge 
of the patch enabled them to fill their pails first ; then 
they went about helping the others, whose voices 
babbled on like streams. 

Everywhere the pink sun-bonnets and ragged straw 
hats bobbed up and down. Everywhere fresh voices. 
The sunlight fell in vivid yellow patches through the 
cool, odorous gloom. Everywhere the faint odor of ferns 
and mandrakes and berries, and the faint rustle of leaves, 
as if the shadows of the clouds trampled the tree-tops. 

There was something sweet and wild and primeval in 
the scene, and the children were carried out of their 


24 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

usual selves. Rose herself danced and romped, her eyes 
flashing with delight. Under her direction they all 
came together on a little slope, where the trees were 
less thick, and near a brook which gurgled through 
moss-covered stones. 

‘‘ Oh, let’s have our picnic here ! ” 

“ All right, let’s ! ” 

They made short work of the lunch they had. Their 
buttered biscuits were spread with berries and mixed 
with water from the brook, which the girls drank like 
the boys — that is, by lying down on their breasts and 
drinking as the hunter drinks. Their hunger eased, 
they fell to playing games. Games centuries old. 
Games which the Scandinavians played in the edges of 
their pine forests. Games the English lads and lassies 
played in the oak-openings of middle-age England. 

The little ones were ruled out after a while, and the 
five or six older children (the eldest only fourteen) went 
on with their games, which told of love. They joined 
hands and circled about Carl ; they sang ; 

“ King William was King James’s son. 

And from the royal race he run. 

Upon his breast he wore a star. 

Which points away to a conquest far. 

Go choose you east, go choose you west. 

Go choose the one that you love best.” 

Carl selected Rose, as they all knew he would. 
They stood together now, holding hands. 


“ Down on this carpet you must kneel. 


An Opening Clover Bloom 


25 


(they knelt) 

As sure as the grass grows in the field. 

Salute your bride with a kiss so sweet, 

(Carl kissed her gravely) 

Now you rise upon your feet.” 

Again they circled, and again a little bride and bride- 
groom knelt. The fresh young voices rang under the 
spaces of the trees, silencing the cry of the thrush. 
The flecking sunlight fell on their tousled hair and their 
flushed faces. They had forgotten home and kindred, 
and were living a strange new-old life, old as history, 
wild and free once more, and in their hearts something 
bloomed like a flower, something sweet shook them all, 
something unutterable and nameless, something mag- 
nificent to attain and sorrowful to lose. 

When they tired of “ King William’’ they all flung 
themselves down on the grass and grew quiet. Some 
of the girls made wreaths of flowers strung on grass- 
stems, while the boys studied the insects under the chips 
and stumps, or came slyly behind the girls and stuck 
spears of fox-tail down their necks. Some of them 
rolled down the bank. Carl, when he was tired of this, 
came and lay down by Rose, and put his head in her 
lap. Other bridegrooms did the same with their brides. 
Some of the boys matched violets, by seeing which 
would hook the other’s head olF. 

Silence fell on them. Some passion thrilled Rose as 
she looked down into Carl’s sunny blue eyes. She 


26 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

brushed his hair as he looked up at the clouds sailing 
above the trees like wonderful mountains of snow. 

She was thirteen years of age, but prophecy of 
womanhood, of change, of sorrow, was in her voice as 
she said, slowly, a look not childish upon her face : 

‘‘ I M like to live here forever, wouldn’t you, Carl ? ” 

‘‘ I guess we’d have to build a house,” said Carl, 
the practical one. 

She felt a terrible hunger, a desire to take his head in 
her arms and kiss it. Her muscles ached and quivered 
with something she could not fathom. As she resisted 
she grew calm, but mysteriously sad, as if something 
were passing from her forever. The leaves whispered 
a message to her, and the stream repeated an occult 
note of joy, which was mixed with sorrow. 

The struggle of wild fear and bitter-sweet hunger of 
desire — this vague, mystical perception of her sex, did 
not last with Rose. It was lost when she came out of 
the wood into the road on the way homeward. It was 
a formless impulse and throbbing stir far down below 
definite thought. It was sweet and wild and innocent 
as the first coquettish love-note of the thrush, and yet 
it was the beginning of her love-life. It was the second 
great epoch of her life. 


CHAPTER V 


HER FIRST PERIL 

She came in contact during her school-life with a 
variety of teachers. Most of the women she did not 
like, but one sweet and thoughtful girl had her un- 
bounded love and confidence. She was from Madison, 
that was in itself a great distinction, for the capital of 
the State had come to mean something great and beauti- 
ful and heroic to Rose. 

There it was the Governor lived. There the soldiers 
went to enter the army, she remembered hearing the 
neighbors say, and her father’s weekly paper was printed 
there. It was a great thing to have come from so far 
away and from Madison, and Rose hung about the door 
of the school-house at the close of the first day, hop- 
ing the teacher would permit her to walk home by her 
side. 

The young woman, worried almost to despair over 
the arrangement of her classes, did not rise from her 
desk until the sun was low, rolling upon the tree-fringed 
ridge of the western bluff. 

She was deeply touched to find this dusky-complex- 
ioned, bare-legged girl waiting for her. 


27 


28 


Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly 


“ It was very nice of you, Rose,” she said, and they 
walked off together. She talked about the flowers in 
the grass, and Rose ran to and fro, climbing fences to 
pick all sorts that she knew. She did not laugh when 
the teacher told her their botanical names. She wished 
she could remember them. 

“ When you grow up you can study botany too. 
But you must run home now, it’s almost dark.” 

“ I ain’t afraid of the dark,” said Rose, stoutly, and 
she went so far that Miss Lavalle was quite alarmed. 

“ Now you must go.” 

She kissed the child good-by, and Rose ran off with 
her heart big with emotion, like an accepted lover. 

It was well Rose turned to her for help, for few 
of her teachers heretofore had the refinement of Miss 
Lavalle. They were generally farmers’ daughters or 
girls from neighboring towns, who taught for a little 
extra money to buy dresses with — worthy girls indeed, 
but they expressed less of refining thought to the children. 

One day this young teacher, with Rose and two or 
three other little ones, was sitting on a sunny southward 
sloping swell. Her hands were full of flowers and her 
great dark eyes were opened wide as if to mirror the 
whole scene, a valley flooded with light and warm with 
the radiant grass of spring. She was small and dark 
and dainty, and still carried the emotional characteristics 
of her French ancestry. She saw nature definitely, and 
did not scruple to say so. 

“ Oh, it is beautiful ! ” she said, as her eyes swept 
along the high broken line of the Western coolly ridge. 


Her First Peril 


29 


down to the vast blue cliffs ; where the river broke its way 
into the larger valley. “ Children, see how beautiful it 
is ! ” The children stared away at it, but Rose looked 
into the teacher’s eager face. Then her flowers dropped 
to the ground, the sunlight fell upon her with a richer 
glow, the dandelions shone like stars in a heaven of 
green, the birds and the wind sang a sweet new song in 
the doors of her ears, and her heart swelled with unutter- 
able emotion. She was overpowered by the beauty of 
the world, as she had been by its immensity that day on 
the hill-top with her father. 

She saw the purple mists, the smooth, green, warm 
slopes dotted with dandelions, and the woodlands with 
their amber and purple-gray and gray-green foliage. The 
big world had grown distinctly beautiful to her. It was 
as if a thin gray veil had been withdrawn from the face 
of created things — but this perception did not last. The 
mist fell again before her eyes when the presence of the 
teacher was withdrawn. She felt the beautiful and 
splendid phases of nature, and absorbed and related them 
to herself, but she did not consciously perceive, except at 
rare moments. 

The men, who taught her in winter, were blunt and 
crude, but occasionally one of a high type came, some 
young fellow studying law, or taking a course at some 
school, teaching to keep his place or to go higher. 
These men studied nights and mornings out of great 
Latin books which were the wonder of the children. 
Such teachers appealed to the better class of pupils with 
great power, but excited rebellion in others. 


30 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

It seemed a wonderful and important day to Rose, the 
first time she entered the scarred and greasy room in 
winter, because it was swarming with big girls and boys. 
She took her seat at one of the little benches on the 
north side of the room, where all the girls sat. At some 
far time the girls had been put on that, the coldest side 
of the house, and they still sat there ; change was im- 
possible. 

Rose was a little bit awed by the scene. The big boys 
never seemed so rough, and the big girls never seemed so 
tall. They were all talking loudly, hanging about the old 
square stove which sat in the middle of a puddle of bricks. 

She was an unimportant factor in the winter school, 
however, for the big boys and girls ignored the little ones, 
or ordered them out of their games. “ I hate to be lit- 
tle,” she said once, “ I want to be grown up.” 

In winter also her physical superiority to the other 
girls was less apparent, for she wore thick ’ shoes and 
shapeless dresses, and muffled her head and neck like 
the boys. 

She plodded to school along the deep sleigh-tracks, 
facing a bitter wind, with the heart of a man. It made 
her cry sometimes, but there was more of rage than 
fear in her sobbing. She coughed and wheezed like 
the rest, but through it all her perfect lungs and power- 
ful little heart carried her triumphantly. 

The winter she was fourteen years of age she had for 
a teacher a girl whose beautiful presence brought a curse 
with it. She was small and graceful, with a face full 
of sudden tears and laughter and dreams of desire. She 


Her First Peril 


3 ^ 


fascinated the children, and the larger boys woke to a 
sudden savagery of rivalry over her, which no one 
seemed to understand. The older boys fought over 
her smiles and low-voiced words of praise. 

The girls grew vaguely jealous or were abject slaves 
to her whims. The school became farcical in session, 
with ever-increasing play hours and ever-shortening 
recitations, and yet such was the teacher’s power over 
the students they did not report her. She gathered the 
larger girls around her as she flirted with the young 
men, until children like Carl and Rose became involved 
in its ever-hastening whirlpool of passion. 

At night the young men of the neighborhood flocked 
about the teacher’s boarding-place, actually fighting in 
her very presence for the promise which she withheld, 
out of coquettish perversity. She went out to parties 
and dances every night and came languidly to school 
each morning. Most of the men of the district laughed 
at the words of the women who began to talk excitedly 
about the stories they had heard. 

At school the most dangerous practices were winked 
at. The older boys did not scruple to put their arms 
about the teacher’s waist as they stood by her side. All 
the reserve and purity which is organic in the intercourse 
of most country girls and boys seemed lost, and parties 
and sleigh-rides left a feeling of remorse and guilt be- 
hind. There was something feverish and unwholesome 
in the air. 

The teacher’s fame mysteriously extended to Tyre, 
and when evil-minded men began to hitch their horses 


32 Rose of Dutcher*s Coolly 

at the fence before her boarding-house and to enter into 
rivalry with the young men of the neighborhood, then 
the fathers of the coolly suddenly awoke to their chil- 
dren’s danger, and turning the teacher away (tearful and 
looking harmless as a kitten), they closed and locked 
the school-house door. 

Instantly the young people grew aware of their out- 
break of premature passion. Some of them, like Rose, 
went to their parents and told all they knew about it. 
John Dutcher received his daughter’s answers to his 
questions with deep sorrow, but he reflected long before 
he spoke. She was only a child, not yet fifteen ; she 
would outgrow the touch of thoughtless hands. 

He sent for Carl, and as they stood before him, with 
drooping heads, he talked to them in his low, mild voice, 
which had the power of bringing tears to the sturdy boy’s 
eyes. 

“ Carl, I thought I could trust you. You’ve done 
wrong — don’t you know it? You’ve made my old 
heart ache. When you get old and have a little girl 
you may know how I feel, but you can’t now. I don’t 
know what I can say to you. I don’t know what I 
am going to do about it, but I want you to know what 
you’ve done to me — both of you. Look into my face 
now — you too. Rose — look into your old father’s 
face!” 

The scarred children looked into his face with its 
streaming tears, then broke out into sobbing that shook 
them to their heart’s centre. They could not bear to 
see him cry. “That’s what you do to your parents 


Her First Peril 


33 

when you do wrong. I haven’t felt so bad since your 
mother died, Rose.” 

The children sobbed out their contrition and desire to 
do better, and John ended it all at last by saying, “ Now, 
Carl, you may go, but I shall keep watch of you and see 
that you grow up a good, true man. When I see 
you’re real sorry I’ll let you come to see Rose again.” 

After Carl went out. Rose pressed into his ready arms. 
“ I didn’t mean to be bad, pappa.” 

“ I know you didn’t, Rosie, but I want you to know 
how you can make me suffer by doing wrong — but 
there, there ! don’t cry any more. Just be good and 
kind and true, like your mother was. Now run away 
and help get supper.” 

The buoyancy of a healthy child’s nature enabled her 
to throw off the oppression of that dark day, the most 
terrible day of her life, and she was soon cheerful again 
— not the child she had been, but still a happy child. 
After a few weeks John sent for Carl to come over, and 
they popped corn and played dominoes all the evening, 
and the innocency of their former childish companionship 
seemed restored. 


CHAPTER VI 


HER FIRST IDEAL 

One June day a man came riding swiftly up the lanes, 
in a buggy with a guilded box. As he passed the school- 
house he flung a handful of fluttering yellow and red 
bills into the air. 

“ A circus ! a circus ! ” was the cry as the boys rushed 
for the blowing sheets of paper. It was a circus, the 
annual “ monstrous aggregation of Gregorian games and 
colossal cataracts of gilded chariots,” and it was coming 
to Tyre. 

The children read every word of those high-sounding 
posters, standing in knots by the roadside. It was the 
mightiest event of their lives. Most of them had never 
been to a circus. Many had never been so far as Tyre. 
The few who had, however, straightway became foun- 
tains of wisdom, and declaimed upon the splendors of 
other “ aggregations of world-wide wonders.” 

Rose looked at the lines of knights and ladies winding 
down the yellow broad-side of the sheet, and wondered 
if she would ever have the joy of seeing them. 

The courier rode on. He flung a handful of the 
bills over into the corn-field where Carl was ploughing 
34 


Her First Ideal 


35 

corn with the hired man, and Carl straightway began to 
plan. 

He flung a handful of the alluring yellow leaves into 
the bed of the wagon which poor old John Rapp was 
driving, and he sighed and wondered how he could raise 
the money to take the children down, and he also longed 
to see it himself. The whole county awoke to the sig- 
nificance of the event and began preparation and plans, 
though it was nearly three weeks away. An enormous 
distance it seemed to the boys and girls. 

At school and at church it was talked of. The boys 
selected their girls, and parties of four or six were made 
up to go to Tyre, ten miles away, in the larger valley 
below. In some way, without words. Rose agreed to go 
with Carl. John Nixon and Ella Pierce made up the 
other couple. They were to go in a “ bowery wagon.” 

The whole population awoke to pathetic, absorbing 
interest in the quality of the posters and the probable 
truth of the foreword. The circus was the mightiest 
contrast to their slow and lonely lives that could be im- 
agined. It came in trailing clouds of glorified dust and 
grouped itself under vast tents, whose lift and fall had 
more majesty than summer clouds, and its streamers had 
more significance than the lightning. 

It brought the throb of drum and scream of fife, and 
roar of wild beast. For one day each humdrum town 
was filled with romance like the “ Arabian Nights ” ; 
with helmeted horsemen, glittering war maidens on 
weirdly spotted horses; elephants with howdahs and 
head-plates of armor; with lions dreadful, sorrowful. 


36 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

sedate, and savage ; with tigers and hyenas in unman- 
ageable ferocity pacing up and down their gilded dens 
while their impassive keepers, dressed in red, sat in 
awful silence amidst them. 

There was something remote and splendid in the la- 
dies who rode haughtily through the streets on prancing 
horses, covered with red and gold trappings. There was 
something heroic, something of splendid art in the pose 
of the athletes in the ring. 

From the dust and drudgery of their farms the farm 
boys dreamed and dreamed of the power and splendor 
of the pageantry. They talked of it each Sunday night 
as they sat up with their sweethearts. The girls planned 
their dresses and hats, and the lunch they were to take. 
Everything was arranged weeks ahead. Carl was to 
furnish one team, John the other; Ella was to bring 
cake and jelly and biscuit ; Rose to take a chicken and 
a shortcake. 

They were to start early and drive a certain route 
and arrive at the ground at a certain hour to see the 
parade. After the parade they were to take dinner at 
the hotel, and then the circus ! No court ball ever 
thrilled a young girl’s heart like this event. 

It was trebly important to Rose. It was her first 
really long dress. It was her first going out into the 
world with an escort, and it was her first circus. She 
trembled with excitement whenever she thought of it, 
and sometimes burst into tears at the uncertainty of it. 
It might rain, she might be sick, or something might 
happen ! 


Her First Ideal 


37 


She worked away with feverish haste, trimming her 
hat and helping on her dress, which was to be white, 
trimmed with real lace from the store. Some dim per- 
ception of what it all meant to his girl penetrated John 
Dutcher’s head, and he gave Rose a dollar to buy some 
extra ribbon with, and told Mrs. Diehl to give the child 
a good outfit. 

On the night before the circus Carl could not work 
in the corn. He drove furiously about the neighbor- 
hood on inconsequential errands. He called twice on 
Rose, and they looked into each other's face with trans- 
ports of fear and joy. 

“ Oh, if it should rain ! ” 

“It won't. I just know it's going to be fine. Don't 
you worry. I am the son of a prophet. I know it 
can't rain.” 

There was no real sleep for Rose that night. Twice 
she woke from an uneasy doze, thinking she heard the 
patter of rain, but listening close she found it to be only 
the rustle of the cotton-wood trees about the house. 

Her room was a little rough-plastered garret room, 
with an eastern window, and at last she saw the yellow 
light interfiltrate the dark-blue of the eastern sky, and 
she rose and pattered about in her bare feet, while she 
put up her hair like a woman and slipped on her under- 
skirt, stiff with starch, and then her dress, with its 
open-work sleeves and ruche of lace, threaded with blue 
ribbon. She moved about on her bare feet, rejoicing in 
the crisp rustle of her new clothing, and put on her 
wide hat with its hectic rose-buds and paris-green thick 


3 8 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

leaves. Her undistorted feet were the most beautiful of 
all, but she did not know that. 

She sat on the bed completely dressed, but hardly 
daring to move for fear of waking her aunt. She 
watched the yellow glow deepen to a saffron dome of 
ever-spreading light. She knew the weather signs her- 
self, and she was sure the day was to be hot but clear, 
She did not fear the heat. 

As she sat so, a feeling of joy, of realization of the 
abounding goodness and sweetness of living, made her 
want to thank something — to give praise. She moved 
her lips in a little prayer of thanks to the sun, as his 
first glittering rim of light came above the low hills. 

“ Rosie ! ’’ called Mrs. Diehl. 

“ I’m up,” she replied, and hastily drew on her shoes 
and stockings. She took her hat in her hand and went 
down the stairs and through the little sitting-room out 
to the doorstep. She heard someone whistling. Then a 
shout of laughter — they are coming ! 

She had packed her basket the night before, and 
she stood ready at the gate when Carl and his compan- 
ions drove up. They had four horses hitched to a large 
wagon, which was set about with branches of oak and 
willow. Carl was driving and Rose mounted to the 
front seat with him. He cracked his whip and they 
whirled away, leaving the old folks calling warnings 
after them. 

The sun was just rising, the dew was still globed on 
the wild roses. The wagon rumbled, the bower over 
their heads shook with the jar of the wheels. The 


Her First Ideal 


39 


horses were fresh and strong and the day was before 
them. Rose felt something vague and sweet, some- 
thing that laved the whole world like sunlight. 

She was too happy to sing. She only sat and 
dreamed. She felt her clothes, but she was no longer 
acutely conscious of them. 

Carl was moved too, but his emotion vented itself in 
shouts and cheery calls to the horses, and to the pistol- 
like cracking of his whip. 

He looked at her with clear-eyed admiration. She 
abashed him a little by her silence. She seemed so 
unwontedly womanly in that pose, and the glow of her 
firm arms through her sleeve was alien, somehow. 

The way led around hill-sides, under young oak-trees, 
across dappled sands, and over little streams where the 
horses stopped to drink. It was like some world-old 
idyl, this ride in a heavy rumbling wagon ; it led to 
glory and light, this road among the hills. 

Rounding a long, low line of bluffs they caught the 
flutter of flags in Tyre, and saw the valley spotted with 
other teams, crawling like beetles down the sandy river 
roads. The whole land seemed to be moving in gala 
dress toward Tyre. Everywhere appeared the same 
expectancy, the same exultation between lovers. 

Carl pulled up with a flourish at the wooden porch 
of the Farmers’ Hotel, and the girls alighted and went 
into the parlor, while the boys took the horses into a 
back alley and gave them their oats and hay in the end 
of the box. 

As Rose walked into the parlor, filled with other girls 


40 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

and young men, the proud consciousness of her clothes 
came back to her, and she carried herself with a lift of 
the head, which made her dark gypsy-like face look 
haughty as a young queen^s. She knew her dress was 
as good as any other there, and she had no need to be 
ashamed, and besides it was her first long dress and she 
wore low shoes. 

The boys came bustling back and hurried the girls 
out on the sidewalk. “ They’re coming ! ” they cried 
breathlessly, as a far-off burst of music came in on a 
warm puff of wind. 

On they came, a band leading the way. Just behind, 
with glitter of lance and shine of helmet, came a dozen 
knights and fair ladies riding spirited chargers. They 
all looked strange and haughty and sneeringly indiffer- 
ent to the cheers of the people. The women seemed 
small and firm and scornful, and the men rode with 
lances uplifted, looking down at the crowd with a 
haughty droop in their eyelids. 

Rose shuddered with a new emotion as they swept past. 
She had never looked into eyes like those. They had 
wearied of all splendor and triumph, those eyes. They 
cared nothing for flaunt of flag or blast of bugle. They 
rode straight out of the wonder and mystery of the 
morning to her. They came from the unknown spaces 
of song and story beyond the hills. 

The chariots rumbled on almost unheeded by Rose. 
She did not laugh at the clown jiggling along in a pony- 
cart, for there was a face between her and all that 
followed. The face of a bare-armed knight, with 


Her First Ideal 


41 


brown hair and a curling mustache, whose proud neck 
had a curve in it as he bent his head to speak to his 
rearing horse. He turned his face toward where Rose 
stood, and her soul fluttered, and her flesh shrank as if 
from fire, but he rode on. His face was fine, like pic- 
tures she had seen. It was a pleasant face, too, proud, 
but not coarse and stern like the others. 

The calliope (a musical monster, hideous as the hip- 
popotamus) and the dens of beasts went past without 
arousing her interest ; then an open cage of lions rolled 
by with the trainer carelessly seated on a camp-stool 
amid his dun-colored monsters. His gaudy red-and-gold 
coat was like Washington’s and his impassive face was 
stern and sad. At last the procession ended, carrying 
with it swarms of detached boys and girls, whose par- 
ents fearfully called after them and unavailingly pleaded 
with them to come back as they broke away. 

“ Oh, I wish it would all come by again ! ” sighed 
Ella. 

“ So do I,” said Carl. 

Rose remained silent. Somehow those knights and 
ladies dwarfed all else. She did not look forward to eat- 
ing a hotel dinner with the same pleasure now, but was 
eager to get to the tent, whose pennants streamed above 
the roofs of the houses. 

The Farmers’ House swarmed with country folks, 
whose loud voices could be heard uttering shouts of sat- 
isfaction over the promise of the parade. It was the 
best ever seen in the town. 

‘‘ Right this way, ladies and gentlemen,” said the land - 


42 


Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly 


lord, as he ushered Carl’s party down to a table at the 
end of the dining-room. 

Rose lifted her head with joy and pride ; she was a 
grown-up person at last. This landlord recognized her 
assumption and it made the dinner almost enjoyable. 
She saw no one better dressed than herself, and she had 
a feeling that she was good to look at. She was indeed 
more beautiful than she knew. A city drummer sitting 
at another table eyed her all through the meal with 
breathless admiration. Her health and color, and the 
firm lines of her nose and chin were especially attractive. 

They all ate with unusual formality, using their forks 
instead of knives for their pie, and otherwise trying to 
seem citified. Ella laughed at the antics John cut up 
over his fork, and the sly digs that he gave Carl, who 
chased the crust of his pie around his plate with a fork 
and at last gave up hope and seized it with his fingers. 

No one noticed these pranks, because everyone else 
was carrying on in much the same way. At length they 
rose and returned to the parlor, where they sat about on 
the cheap red plush chairs and waited for one o’clock. 

“Well, it’s about time to go,” said Carl, on returning 
from one of his many visits to the street. “ Gee-Whit- 
taker ! but it’s hot out there ! ” 

“ It’ll be cool under the tent.” 

“ Well, come on.” 

Out on the street they joined the stream of lovers 
like themselves, moving hand in hand down the walk, 
assaulted by cries of lemonade, candy and fruit 
hucksters. 


Her First Ideal 


43 


The sun beat upon their heads ; a dust rose from the 
feet of the passing teams and settled on the white dresses 
of the girls, and sank through the meshes of their sleeves 
and gathered in the moist folds of their ruches. They 
moved on rapidly toward the clanging band, the flutter 
of the pennants and the brazen outcries of the ticket- 
takers. On to the square before the tents, thronged with 
innumerable people ; there an avenue of sideshows faced 
them like a gauntlet to be run. Before each flapping 
sign of fat woman, or snake-charmer, stood a man who 
cried in strange, clanging, monotonous, and rhythmical 
voice : 

“You have still a half an hour, ladies and gentlemen, 
before the great show opens. Come in and see the won- 
ders of the world.” 

Before the ticket-wagon a straggling, excited crowd 
wrestled, suspicious, determined, hurried. Leaving their 
girls in the more open space, the boys gripping their 
dollars with sweaty fingers drew deep breaths of resolu- 
tion and plunged into the press with set, determined faces. 

They returned soon, hot, disarranged but triumphant. 
“ Come on, girls.” 

They moved upon the main entrance, where a man 
stood snatching at the tickets which were handed to him. 
He was humorous, and talked as he pushed the people in. 

“ Hurry up, old man ; trot close after your mother. 
Have your tickets ready, everybody. Yes, right this 
way, uncle. Bless your dear little face — right ahead. 
H’y’ere, bub, this ticket’s no good ! — Oh, so it is, I 
didn’t see the right side — get on quick.” 


44 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


As Rose passed him he said, “You go in free, my 
dear, ” and resumed his bawling cry, “ Have your tickets 
ready. ” 

Under the tent ! Rose looked up at the lifting, tremu- 
lous, translucent canvas with such awe as the traveller 
feels in St. Peter’s dome. Her feet stumbled on, while 
she clung to Carl’s hand without knowing it. Oh, the 
enormous crowds of people, the glitter and change of it all ! 

They followed in the stream which flowed around the 
circle of animal dens, and Rose silently looked at all she 
saw. The others laughed and exclaimed, but she did 
not. Everything seem inexplicable and mysterious, and 
roused confusing trains of thought. 

She saw the great tigers, and caught the yellow-green 
sheen of their eyes. She saw the lions rise like clouds of 
dust in their corners, silent as mist and terrible as light- 
ning. She looked at the elephant and wondered how he 
could live and still be so like the toy elephants she had 
at home. On past shrieking tropical birds and grunting, 
wallowing beasts, and chattering crowds of people she 
moved, without a word, till they came around to the 
circus entrance, and then she lifted her eyes again around 
the great amphitheatre. 

“ Peanuts, peanuts here, five a bag ! ” 

“ Here’s your lemonade, cool and fresh ! ” 

On all sides brazen-voiced young men were selling, 
at appalling prices, sticks of candy, glasses of lemonade, 
palm-leaf fans, and popcorn balls. There was something 
about them that frightened her, and she walked a little 
closer to Carl. “ Let’s get a seat, Carl, ” she said. 


Her First Ideal 


45 


They heard familiar voices call, and looking up saw 
some young people from their coolly, and so clambered 
up to join them. The boards were narrow and the seats 
low, but nobody minded that, for that was part of the 
circus. 

They were settled at last and ready to enjoy all that 
came. Two or three volunteered to say: “This is 
great ! the best place to see 'em come in. " Then they 
passed the peanut-bag in reckless liberality. 

Rose sat in a dream of delight as the band began to 
play. It was an ambitious band and played operatic 
selections with variations, and it seemed to Rose to be 
the most splendid music in the world. All other bands 
she had heard played right along tum-tummy, tum-tummy 
tummy, tummy-tum. This band sang and talked and 
whispered and dreamed. It was her first conception of 
the power of music. 

She heard nothing that was said about her, and she 
did not know she was squeezing Carl’s arm during the 
opening piece. 

People streamed by in enormous crowds. Ladies in 
elegant dresses, and hats such as she had never seen be- 
fore. Handsome young men went by, but she gave 
them no second look. They were like figures in a 
dream. 

At last the band blared an announcing note, and the 
uniformed attendants filing into the ring took positions at 
set points like sentries. Then the music struck into a 
splendid galop, and out from the curtained mysteries 
beyond, the knights and ladies darted, two and two. 


46 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

in glory of crimson and gold, and green and silver. At 
their head rode the man v^ith the brown mustache. 

They swirled rapidly into position, and then began a 
series of bewildering changes, directed by her knight, 
whose shout dominated the noise of the horses and the 
blare of the band, with wild, echoing sound. 

They vanished as they entered ; then came the clowns, 
and tricks, and feats of strength. The iron-jawed woman 
lifted incredible weights ; the Japanese jugglers tossed 
cannon-balls, knives, and feathers ; the baby elephant 
stood on his head — and then suddenly six men, dressed 
in tights of blue and white and orange, ran into the ring, 
and her hero led them ! 

He wore blue and silver, and on his breast was a gay 
rosette. He looked a god to her. His naked limbs, 
his proud neck, the lofty carriage of his head, made her 
shiver with emotion. They all came to her lit by the 
white radiance ; they were not naked, they were beauti- 
ful, but he was something more. 

She had seen nude boys, and her own companions 
occasionally showed themselves nude and cowering be- 
fore her, but these men stood there proud and splendid. 
They invested their nakedness with something which 
exalted them. They became objects of luminous 
beauty to her, though she knew nothing of art. 

As she grew clearer-eyed, she saw that one was a 
little too short, another too lean, but he of the rosette 
was perfect. The others leaped, with him, doing the 
same feats, but as distances were increased, and the 
number of camels and horses grew, the others stood by 


Her First Ideal 


47 


to see him make his renowned double somersault over a 
herd of animals. When the applause broke out she 
joined in it, while her temples throbbed with emotion. 
To see him bow and kiss his fingers to the audience 
was a revelation of manly grace and courtesy. He 
moved under the curtain, bowing still to the cheering 
crowd. 

Once more he came into the ring, leading a woman 
by the hand. She, too, was in tights throughout, and 
like him she walked with a calm and powerful move- 
ment, but she seemed petty beside him. 

Something new seized upon Rose’s heart, a cold con- 
traction that she had never felt, and her teeth pressed 
together. She wondered if the woman were his wife. 

The acrobat seized a rope with her right arm and 
was drawn to the tent roof. Her companion took a 
strap in his mouth and was drawn to his trapeze op- 
posite. There, in mid-air, they performed their dan- 
gerous evolutions. It was all marvellous and incredible 
to the country girl. 

She heard him clap his hands, then his glorious voice 
rang above the music, and the slim figure of his com- 
panion launched itself through the air, was caught by 
the shoulders in his great hands. Thence with a twist 
he tossed her, and hooked her by the hands. 

Each time, the blood surged into Rose’s throat as 
if to suffocate her. A horrible fear that was also a 
pleasure, rose and fell in her. She could not turn away 
her head. 

She was a powerful girl, and the idea of fainting had 


48 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

never come to her, but when, at the conclusion, her 
hero dropped in a revolving ball into the net far beneath, 
she turned sick and her eyes seemed to whirl in their 
sockets. Then as he leaped to the ground, bowing and 
smiling, the blood rushed back to her face, and the per- 
spiration stood like rain on her brow. 

Thereafter, riders came, and the clowns capered, and 
the ring-master cracked his whip, and she enjoyed it, 
but it was an after-climax. She saw it, but saw it 
dimly. Nothing but the lions and their trainers aroused 
her to applause. Her brain was full. It was a feast of 
glories and her hunger had made her lay hold upon the 
first that came, to the neglect of what followed. 

At last the brazen, resounding voice of the ring- 
master announced the end of the programme, and the 
audience rising moved out in a sort of a hush, as if in 
sorrow to think the glory was over, and the humdrum 
world about to rush back upon them. 

Rose moved along in perfect silence, clinging to 
CarPs hand. Around her sounded the buzz of low 
speech, the wailing of tired and hungry babies, and the 
clamor of attendants selling tickets for the minstrel 
show to follow. 

Suddenly she perceived that her dress was wet with 
perspiration and grimy with dust. All about her, 
women with flushed faces and grimy hands, their hats 
awry and their brows wrinkled with trouble, scolded 
fretful children. The men walked along with their 
coats over their arms, and their hats pushed back. The 
dust arose under their feet with a strange smell. Out 


Her First Ideal 


49 

in the animal tent the odor was stifling, and Rose 
hurried Carl out into the open air. 

Somehow it seemed strange to find the same blue skv 
arching the earth ; things seemed faded and dusty. 
Rose had grown older. She had developed immeasur- 
ably in those few hours. It took her some time to 
fully recover the use of her feet, and it took longer to 
get back a full realization of where she was. 

The grass, crushed and trampled and littered with 
paper and orange-peel, gave out a fresh, farm-like odor, 
that helped her to recover herself. She would not talk, 
she could not listen yet. She but urged Carl to go 
home. She wanted to get home to think. 

As they climbed the slope on the other side of the 
river, they looked back at the tents with their wilted 
streamers, at the swarming teams diminished to the 
size of beetles and the ant-like human beings, and it 
seemed to Rose as if she must weep, so poignant was 
her sense of personal loss. 

She knew something sweet and splendid and mystical 
was passing out of her life after a few hours’ stay there. 
Her feeling of loss was none the less real because it 
was indefinable in words. 

The others chattered about the show, and shouted 
admiration about this and that feat, but Rose was silent.. 
When they stopped at sunset beside a spring to eat 
their lunch she merely said : 

“ I don’t feel hungry.” 

The others fell silent after a time, and all rode dream- 
ily forward, with the roll of wheels making them sleepy 


50 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

and the trample of the horses’ feet telling them how 
rapidly they were leaving their great day’s pleasure 
behind them. 

When Rose huddled into her little attic bed, her eyes 
were wide open, and her brain active as at noonday. 
There was no sleep for her then. Lying there in the 
darkness she lived it all over again ; the flutter of flags, 
the wild voices, the blare of music, the chariots, the 
wild beasts, the knights and ladies, the surging crowds ; 
but the crowning glory, the pictures which lingered 
longest in her mind were the splendid and beautiful 
men, whose naked majesty appealed to her pure whole- 
some awakening womanhood, with the power of beauty 
and strength and sex combined. 

These glorious, glittering, graceful beings, with their 
marvellous strength and bravery, filled her with a deep, 
sad hunger, which she could not understand. They 
came out of the unknown, led by her chosen one, like 
knights in “ Ivanhoe.” 

She fell asleep thinking of the one in blue and silver, 
and in her sleep she grew braver and went closer to 
him, and he turned and spoke to her, and his voice was 
like waters running, and his eyes shone into her eyes 
like a light. 

When she rose the next day she was changed. She 
moved about the house dull and languid. Never before 
had she failed to sleep when her head touched the pil- 
low. She managed to be alone most of the time, and 
at last her mind cleared. She began to live for him. 


Her First Ideal 


51 

her ideal. She set him on high as a being to be wor- 
shipped, as a man fit to be her judge. 

In the days and weeks which followed she asked her- 
self, “Would he like me to do this ? ” or she thought, 
“ I must not do that. What would he think of me if 
he saw me now ? ” And every night when she went 
to sleep it was with the radiant figure in blue and silver 
before her eyes. 

When the sunset was very beautiful, she thought of 
him. When the stars seemed larger in the blue sky, 
she could see the star upon his grand breast. She knew 
his name ; she had the bill in her little box of trinkets, 
and she could take it out and read, “ William De Lisle, 
the world-famous leader in ground and lofty tumbling, 
in his stupendous leap over two elephants, six camels 
and two horses.’’ 

In all the talk of the circus which followed among 
her companions, she took no part because she feared 
she might be obliged to mention his name. When 
others spoke his name she could feel a hot flush surge 
up over her bosom, and she trembled for fear some 
one might discover her adoration of him. 

She went about with Carl and Rob as before, only 
she no longer yearned for them; they seemed good, 
familiar comrades, but nothing more. To them she 
seemed stranger every day. Her eyes lost their clear, 
brave look; and became dreamy black, and her lids 
drooped. 

Vast ambitions began in her. She determined to be 
a great scholar. She would be something great for his 


52 Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly 

sake. She could not determine what, but she, too, 
would be great. At first she thought of being a circus 
woman. 

She dreamed often of being his companion and com- 
ing on hand in hand with him, bowing to the multitude, 
but when she was drawn to the tent-roof, she awoke 
in a cold sweat of fear, and so she determined to be 
a writer. She would write books like “ Ivanhoe.” 
Those were great days ! Her mind expanded like 
the wings of a young eagle. She read everything ; the 
Ledger^ the Weekly^ and all the dog-eared novels, of 
impassioned and unreal type in the neighborhood. 

In short, she consecrated herself to him as to a king, 
and seized upon every chance to educate herself to be 
worthy of him. Every effort was deeply pathetic, no 
matter how absurd to others. She took no counsel, 
allowed no confidants. She lived alone among her 
play-mates. 

This ideal came in her romantic and perfervid 
period, and it did her immeasurable good. It enabled 
her to escape the clutch of mere brute passion which 
seizes so many girls at that age. It lifted her and 
developed her. 

She did not refuse the pleasures of the autumn and 
the winter, only she did not seem so hearty in her enjoy- 
ment of the rides and parties. She rode with the young 
fellows on moon-lit nights, lying side by side with them 
on the straw-filled bottom of the sleigh, and her heart 
leaped with the songs they sang, but her love went out 


Her First Ideal 


53 


toward her ideal; he filled the circle of her mind. The 
thought of him made the night magical with meaning. 
As she danced with Carl it was her hero’s arm she 
felt. At night, when Carl left her on the door-step, 
she looked up at the stars and the sinking moon, and 
lifted her face in a vague, almost inarticulate vow, “ I 
will be worthy of him ! ” That was the passionate 
resolution, but it did not reach to the definiteness of 
words. 

As she worked about the house she took graceful 
attitudes, and wished he might see her; he would be 
pleased with her. The grace and power of her arm 
acquired new meaning to her. Her body, she recog- 
nized, was beautiful. In the secrecy of her room she 
walked up and down, feeling the splendid action of her 
limbs, muscled almost like his. And all this was fine 
and pure physical joy. Her idea remained indefinite, 
wordless. 

These were days of formless imaginings and ambi- 
tions. “ I will do ! I will do ! ” was her ceaseless cry 
to herself, but what could she do ? What should she 
do ? 

She would be wise, so she read. She got little out of 
her reading that she could make a showing of, but still it 
developed her. It made her dream great things, impos- 
sible things, but she had moments when she tried to live 
these things. 

Meanwhile her manners changed. She became absent- 
minded, and at times seemed sullen and haughty to her 
companions. She did not giggle like the rest of the girls. 


A 


54 


Rose of Butcher s Coolly 


and though she had fine teeth, her smile was infrequent. 
She laughed when occasion demanded, and laughed heart- 
ily, but was not easily stirred to laughter. 

Just in proportion as she ignored the young beaux, 
so they thronged about her. She took refuge in Carl's 
company, and so escaped much persecution, for Carl 
was growing to be a powerful young man, with fists 
like mauls, and was respected among the athletes of the 
neighborhood. 

She did not realize how soon it would be necessary 
to settle with Carl. She accepted his company as a 
matter of course. He filled social requirements for the 
time being. 

Her teacher that winter was a plaintive sort of a mid- 
dle-aged man, a man of considerable refinement, but with 
little force. Rose liked him, but did not respect him 
as she had two or three of the men who had filled the 
teacher’s chair. She could not go to him for advice. 

As the winter wore on the figure of “ William De 
Lisle ” grew dimmer, but not less beautiful. Her love 
for him lost its under-current of inarticulate expectancy; 
it was raised into a sentiment so ethereal that it seemed 
a breath of derision might scatter it like vapor, and 
yet it was immovable as granite. Time alone could 
change it. He still dominated her thought at quiet times, 
at dark when the stars began to shine, but in the day- 
time he was faint as a figure in a dream. 


CHAPTER VII 


ROSE MEETS DR. THATCHER 

The school-house in DutchePs coolly, like most 
country school-houses, was a squalid little den. It was 
as gray as a rock and as devoid of beauty as a dry-goods 
box. It sat in the midst of the valley and had no trees, 
to speak of, about it, and in winter it was almost as 
snow-swept as the school-houses of the prairie. 

Its gray clap-boarding was hacked and scarred with 
knife and stone, and covered with mud and foul marks. 
A visitor who had turned in from the sun-smit winter 
road paused before knocking, and looked at the walls 
and the door with a feeling of mirth and sadness. Was 
there no place to escape the obscene outcome of sexual 
passion ? 

Dr. Thatcher had been a pupil here in this same 
school-house more than twenty years before, and the 
droning, shuffling sound within had a marvellous re- 
awakening power. He was a physician in Madison 
now, and was in the coolly on a visit. 

His knock on the door brought a timid-looking man 
to the door. 

“ I M like to come in awhile,’^ said the Doctor. 


55 


56 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

“ Certainly, certainly,” replied the teacher, much em- 
barrassed by the honor. 

He brought him the chair he had been sitting upon, 
and helped his visitor remove his coat and hat. 

“Now don’t mind me, I want to see everything go 
on just as if I were not here.” 

“Very well, that’s the way we do,” the teacher re- 
plied, and returned to his desk and attempted, at least, 
to carry out his visitor’s request. 

A feeling of sadness, mingled with something word- 
lessly vast, came over the Doctor as he sat looking 
about the familiar things of the room. 

He was in another world, an old, familiar world. 
His eyes wandered lovingly from point to point of the 
room, filled with whispering lips and shuffling feet and 
shock-heads of hair, under which shone bright eyes, 
animal-like in their shifty stare. The curtains, of a 
characterless shade, the battered maps, the scarred and 
scratched blackboards, the patched, precarious plastering, 
the worn floor on which the nails and knots stood like 
miniature mountains, the lop-sided seats, the master’s 
hacked, unpainted pine desk, dark with dirt and polished 
with dirty hands, all seemed as familiar as his own face. 

He sat there listening to the recitations in dreamy 
impassivity. He was far in the land of his youth think- 
ing of the days when to pass from his seat to the other 
side of the room was an event ; when a visitor was a 
calamity — for the teacher ; when the master was a 
tyrant and his school-room a ceaselessly rebellious king- 
dom. 


Rose Meets Dr. Thatcher 


57 


As his eyes fell at last more closely upon the scholars, 
he caught the eyes of a young girl looking curiously at 
him, and so deep was he in the past, his heart gave a 
sudden movement, just as it used to leap when in those 
far-ofF days Stella Baird looked at him. He smiled at 
himself for it. It was really ludicrous, he thought ; 
“ ril tell my wife of it.” 

The girl looked away slowly and without embarrass- 
ment. She was thinking deeply, looking out of the 
window. His first thought was, “ She has beautiful 
eyes.” Then he noticed that she wore her hair neatly 
arranged, and that her dress, though plain, fitted taste- 
fully about the neck. The line of her head was mag- 
nificent. Her color was rich and dark ; her mouth 
looked sad for one so young. Her face had the effect 
of being veiled by some warm, dusky color. 

Was she young ? Sometimes as he studied her she 
seemed a woman, especially as she looked away out of 
the window, and her head was in profile. But she 
looked younger when she bent her head upon her books, 
and her long eyelashes fell upon her cheek. 

His persistent stare brought a vivid flush into her 
face, but she did not nudge her companion and whisper 
as another would have done. 

“ That is no common girl,” the Doctor concluded. 

He sat there while the classes were called up one 
after the other. He heard again inflections, and tones, 
perpetuated for centuries in the school-room, ‘‘ The-cat- 
saw-a-rat.” Again the curfew failed to ring, in the 
same hard, monotonous, rapid, breathless singsong, every 


58 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

other line with a falling inflection. The same failure 
to make the proper pause caused it to appear that “ Bes- 
sie saw him on her brow.” 

Again the heavy boy read the story of the ants, and 
the teacher asked insinuatingly sweet questions. 

“ What did they do ? ” 

“ Made a tunnel.” 

“Yes ! Now what is a tunnel ? ” 

“ A hole that runs under ground.” 

“Very good! It says that the ant is a voracious 
creature. What does that mean ? ” 

“ Dunno.” 

“You don’t know what a voracious creature is ? ” 

“ No, sir.” 

And then came the writing exercise, when each grimy 
fist gripped a pen, and each red tongue rolled around a 
laboring mouth in the vain effort to guide the pen. Cramps 
cramp ; scratchy scratch ; sputter ! What a task it was I 
The December afternoon sun struck in at the win- 
dows, and fell across the heads of the busy scholars, 
and as he looked. Dr. Thatcher was a boy again, and 
Rose and her companions were the “ big girls ” of the 
school. He was looking at Stella, the prettiest girl in 
the district, the sunlight on her hair, a dream of name- 
less passion in her eyes. 

The little room grew wide as romance, and across 
the aisle seemed over vast spaces Girlish eyes met his 
like torches in the night. The dusty air, the shuffle of 
feet, the murmuring of lips only added to the mysterious 
power of the scene. 


Rose Meets Dr. Thatcher 


59 


There they sat, these girls, just as in the far-ofF days, 
trying to study, and succeeding in dreaming of love- 
songs, and sweet embraces on moonlight nights, beneath 
limitless star-shot skies, with sound of bells in their ears, 
and the unspeakable glory of youth and pure passion in 
their souls. 

The Doctor sighed. He was hardly forty yet, but 
he was old in the history of disillusion and in contempt 
of human nature. His deep-set eyes glowed with an 
inward fire of remembrance. 

“ O pathetic little band of men and women,” thought 
he, “ my heart thrills and aches for you.” 

He was brought back to the present with a start by 
the voice of the teacher. 

“ Rose, you may recite now.” 

The girl he had been admiring came forward. As 
she did so he perceived her to be not more than sixteen, 
but she still had in her eyes the look of a dreaming 
woman. 

“ Rose Butcher is our best scholar,” smiled the teacher 
proudly as Rose took her seat. She looked away out of 
the window abstractedly as the teacher opened the huge 
geography and passed it to the Doctor. 

“ Ask her anything you like from the first fifty-six 
pages.” The Doctor smiled and shook his head. 

“ Bound the Sea of Okhotsk,” commanded the teacher. 

Thatcher leaned forward eagerly — her voice would 
tell the story ! 

Without looking around, with her hands in her lap, 
an absent look in her eyes, the girl began, in a husky 


6o 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

contralto voice : “ Bounded on the north — ” and went 
through the whole rigmarole in careless, easeful fashion. 

‘‘ What rivers would you cross in going from Moscow 
to Paris ? ” 

And the child who had never been ten miles from her 
home, uttered with contemptuous serenity the names 
of rivers which formed the pathways of the prehistoric 
hairy men. 

“ Good heavens ! ” thought the Doctor, “ they still 
teach that useless stuff. But how well she does it ! ” 

After some words of praise, which the girl hardly 
seemed to listen to, she took her seat again. 

Rose, on her part, saw another man of grace and 
power. She noted every detail of his dress, his dark, 
sensitive face, the splendid slope of his shoulders, and 
the exquisite neatness and grace of his collar and tie 
and coat. But in his eyes was something that moved 
her, drew her. She felt something subtile there, refine- 
ment and sorrow, and emotions she could only dimly 
feel. 

She could not keep her eyes from studying his face. 
She compared him with “ William De Lisle,” not 
deliberately, always unconsciously. He had nothing 
of the bold beauty of her ideal, but he was a scholar, 
and he had come out of the world beyond the Big 
Ridge, and besides, there was mystery and allurement 
in his face. 

The teacher called as if commanding a regiment of 
cavalry. “ Books. Ready J ” There was a riotous 
clatter, which ended as quickly as it begun. 


Rose Meets Dr. Thatcher 


6i 


“ Kling ! ” They all rose. “ Kltng ! ” and the boys 
moved out with clumping of heavy boots and burst into 
the open air with wild whoopings. The girls gathered 
into little knots and talked, glancing furtively at the 
stranger. Some of them wondered if he were the 
County Superintendent of Schools. 

Rose sat in her seat, with her chin on her clasped 
hands. It was a sign of her complex organization, that 
the effect of a new experience was rooted deep, and 
changes took place noiselessly, far below the surface. 

“ Rose, come here a moment,” called the teacher, 
bring your history.” 

‘‘ Don^t keep her from her playmates,” Thatcher 
remonstrated. 

“ Oh, she’d rather recite any time than play with the 
others.” 

Rose stood near, a lovely figure of wistful hesitation. 
She had been curiously unembarrassed before, now she 
feared to do that which was so easy and so proper. At 
last she saw her opportunity as the teacher turned away 
to ring the bell. 

She touched Thatcher on the arm. “ Do you live in 
Madison, sir ? ” 

“ Yes. I am a doctor there.” 

She looked embarrassed now and twisted her fingers. 

‘‘ Is it so very hard to get into the university ? ” 

“ No. It is very easy — it would be for you,” he 
said with a touch of unconscious gallantry of which he 
was ashamed the next moment, for the girl was looking 
away again. “ Do you want to go to the university ? ” 


62 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


“ Yes, sir, I do.” 

Why ? ” 

“ Oh ! because — I want to know all I can.” 

“ Why ? What do you want to do ? ” 

“ You won’t tell on me, will you ? ” She was blush- 
ing red as a carnation. “Strange mixture of child and 
woman,” thought Thatcher and replied : 

“ Why, certainly not.” 

They stood over by the blackboard but the other girls 
were pointing and snickering. 

“ I guess I won’t tell,” she stammered ; “you’d laugh 
at me like everybody else — I know you would.” 

He took her arm and turned her face toward his ; her 
eyes were full of tears. 

“Tell me. I’ll help you.” 

His eyes glowed with a kindly smile, and she warmed 
under it. 

“ I want to write — stories — and books,” she half 
whispered, guiltily. The secret was out and she wanted 
to run away. The Doctor’s crucial time had come. If 
he laughed ! — but he did not laugh. He looked 
thoughful, almost sad. 

“ You are starting on a long, long road. Rose,” he 
said at last. “ Where it will lead to I cannot tell — 
nobody can. What put that into your head ? ” 

Rose handed him a newspaper clipping containing a 
brief account of “ how a Wisconsin poetess achieved 
fame and fortune.” 

“ Why, my dear girl,” he began, “ don’t you know 
that out of ten thousand — ” He stopped. She was 


Rose Meets Dr. Thatcher 


63 

looking up at him in expectation, her great luminous 
gray-brown eyes burning with an inward hungry fire 
which thrilled him. 

‘‘You may be the one in ten thousand, and Til help 
you,” he said. 

The ringing of the bell brought the pupils clattering 
back into their seats, puffing, gasping, as if at their last 
extremity. For a couple of minutes nothing could be 
done, so great was the noise. While they were getting 
settled Thatcher said to her : 

“ If you want to go to the university you will have to 
go to a preparatory school. Here is my card — write to 
me when you get through here and Fll see what can be 
done for you.” 

Rose went back to her seat, her eyes filled with a 
burning light, her hands strained together. This great 
man from Madison had believed in her. Oh, if he 
would only come home and see her father ! 

She painfully penciled a note and handed it to him as 
she came past the blackboard. He was putting on his 
coat to go, but he looked down at the crumpled note, 
with its painfully ornate Spencerian handwriting. 

“ Please, sir, won’t you come down and see pappa 
and ask him if I can’t go to Madison ? ” 

He looked at the girl whose eyes, big and sombre 
and full of wistful timidity, were fixed upon him. 
Obeying a sudden impulse, he stepped to her side and 
said , “ Yes, I’ll help you ; don’t be troubled.” 

He stayed until school was out and the winter sun was 
setting behind the hills. Rose studied his face with 


64 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


more than admiration. She trusted him. He had said he 
would help her, and his position was one of power in 
her fancy, and something in his manner impressed her 
more deeply than that of any man she had ever seen 
save “William De Lisle,” her dim and shadowy, yet 
kingly figure. 

On his part he was surprised at himself. He was 
waiting a final hour in this school-room out of interest 
and curiosity in a country school-girl. His was a child- 
less marriage, and this girl stirred the parental tender- 
ness native to him. He wished he had such a child to 
educate, to develop. 

The school was out at last, and, as she put on her 
things and came timidly toward him, he turned from 
the teacher to her. 

“ So you are John Butcher’s daughter ? I knew 
your father when I was a lad here. I am stopping at 
the Wallace farm, but I’ll come over a little later and 
see your father.” 

Rose rushed away homeward, full of deep excitement. 
She burst into the barn where John was rubbing the 
wet fetlocks of the horses he had been driving. Her 
eyes were shining and her cheeks were a beautiful pink. 

“ Oh, pappa, he said I ought to go to Madison to 
school. He said he’d help me go.” 

John looked up in astonishment at her excitement. 

“ Who said so ? ” 

“Dr. Thatcher, the man who visited our school 
to-day. He said I’d ought to go, and he said he’d 
help me.” 


Rose Meets Dr. Thatcher 


65 

Her exultation passed suddenly. Somehow there 
was not so much to tell as she had fancied, indeed she 
suddenly found herself unable to explain the basis of 
her enthusiasm. The perceived, but untranslatable 
expression of the Doctor’s face was the real foundation 
of her hope, and that she had not definitely and con- 
sciously noted. If her father could only have seen 
him ! 

“ I guess you’d better wait awhile,” her father said, 
with a smile, which Rose resented. 

“ He’s coming to-night.” 

“ Who’s he ? ” 

“ Dr. Thatcher. He used to live here. He knows 
you.” 

John grew a little more intent on her news. 

“ Does ! I wonder if he is old Stuart Thatcher’s 
son ? He had a boy who went East to school some- 
wheres.” 

Rose went into the house and set to work with the 
graceful celerity which Mrs. Diehl called “ knack.” 

“ Rose, you can turn off work when you really want 
to, to beat anything I ever see.” 

Rose smiled and hummed a little song. Mrs. Diehl 
was made curious. 

‘‘ You’re wonderful good-natured, it seems to me. 
What’s the reason, already ? ” 

“ We’re going to have company.” 

“ Who, for Peter’s sake ? ” 

“Dr. Thatcher.” 

“ What’s he come here for ? ” 


66 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


“To see pappa,’’ said Rose, as she rushed upstairs into 
her attic-room. It was cold up there, warmed only by 
the stove-pipe from the sitting-room, but she sat down 
and fell into a dream in which she recalled every look 
and word he had given her. 

She came suddenly to herself, and began putting on 
her red dress, which was her company dress. When 
she came downstairs in her creaking new shoes Mrs. 
Diehl was properly indignant. 

“ Well ! I declare. Couldn’t you get along in your 
calico ? ” 

“ No, I couldn’t ! ” Rose replied, with easy sharpness, 
which showed the frequent passages at arms between 
them. 

When Thatcher came in with the teacher he was 
quite startled by the change in her. She looked taller 
and older and more womanly in every way. 

She took his hat and coat and made him at home in 
much better fashion than he had reason to think she 
knew. She on her part watched him closely. His man- 
ner at the table was a source of enlightenment to her. 
She felt him to be a strong man, therefore his delicacy 
and consideration meant a great deal to her. It sug- 
gested related things dimly. It made her appreciate 
vaguely the charm of the world from whence he came. 

Dr Thatcher was not young, and his experience as a 
physician had added to his natural insight. He studied 
Rose keenly while he talked with John concerning the 
changes in the neighborhood. 

He saw in the girl great energy and resolution, and a 


Rose Meets Dr. Thatcher 67 

mental organization not simple. She had reason and 
reserve force not apprehended by her father. The prob- 
lem vv^as, should he continue to encourage her. Educa- 
tion of a girl like that might be glorious — or tragic ! 
After supper John Dutcher took him into the corner, 
and, while Rose helped clear away the dishes, the two 
men talked. 

“ You see, ” John explained, “ she’s been talkin’ 
about going on studyin’, for the last six months. I don’t 
know what’s got into the girl, but she wants to go to 
Madison. I suppose her learnin’ of that Bluff-Sidin’ girl 
goin’ has kind o’ spurred her on. I want her to go to 
the high school at the Sidin’, but she wants to go away” 
— he choked a little on that phrase — “ but if you an’ 
her teacher think the girl’d ought to go, why. I’ll send 
her.” 

The younger man looked grave — very grave. He 
foresaw lonely hours for John Dutcher. 

“Well — the girl interests me very much, Mr. Dutcher. 
It’s a strong point in her favor that she wants to go. 
Most girls of her age have little ambition beyond candy 
and new dresses. I guess it’s your duty to send her. 
What she wants is the larger life that will come to her in 
Madison. The preparatory work can be done here at 
the Siding. I believe it is one of the accredited schools. 
Of course she will come home often, and when she 
comes to Madison, I will see that she has a home until 
she gets ‘ wunted,’ as you farmers say.” 

The teacher came in at this point full of wild praise 
of Rose’s ability. “ She’s great on history and geography. 


68 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

She knows about every city and river and mountain on 
the maps.” 

She’s always been great for geography,” confirmed 
John. ‘‘Used to sit and follow out lines on the maps 
when she wasn’t knee-high to a ’tater.” A tender tone 
came into his voice, almost as if he were speaking of a 
dead child. He too had a quick imagination, and he felt 
already the loss of his girl, his daily companion. 

The matter was decided there. “You send her to 
me, when she gets ready, and I’ll have Mrs. Thatcher 
look after her for a week or so, till we find her a place 
to stay.” 

Rose was in a fever of excitement though she caught 
only disconnected words as she came and went about the 
table. At last she saw Dr. Thatcher rise to go and ap- 
proached him timorously. With a smile he said : 

“Well, Rose, when you come to Madison you must 
come to our house. Mrs. Thatcher will be glad to see 
you.” She could not utter a word in thanks. After he 
had gone Rose turned to her father with a swift appeal. 

“ Oh, pappa, am I going ? ” 

He smiled a little. “ We’ll see when the time comes, 
Rosie.” 

She knew what that meant, and she leaped with a joy 
swift as a flame. John sat silently looking at the wall, 
his arm flung over the back of his chair wondering why 
she should feel so happy at the thought of leaving home, 
when to think of losing her for a single day out of his 
life, was bitter as death to him. 

Thenceforward the world began to open to Rose. 


Rose Meets Dr. Thatcher 


69 


Every sign of spring was doubly significant ; the warm 
sun, the passing of wild fowl, the first robin, the green 
grass, the fall of the frost, all appealed to her with a 
power which transcended words. All she did during 
these days was preparation for her great career beyond 
the Ridge. 

She pictured the world outside in colors of such 
splendor that the romance of her story papers seemed 
weak and pale. 

Out there in the world was William De Lisle. Out 
there were ladies with white faces and heavy-lidded, 
haughty eyes, in carriages and in ball-rooms. Out 
there was battle for her, and from her dull little valley 
battle seemed somehow alluring. 


CHAPTER VIII 


LEAVING HOME 

As the time for leaving came on Rose had hours of 
depression, wherein she wondered if it were worth her 
while. Sometimes it began when she noticed a fugitive 
look of sorrow on her father’s face, and sometimes it 
was at parting with some of her girl friends, and some- 
times it was at thought of Carl. She had spent a year 
in the Siding in preparation for the work in Madison, 
and the time of her adventure with the world was near. 

Carl came to be a disturbing force during those last 
few weeks. He had been a factor in all the days of 
her life. Almost without thought on her part she had 
relied upon him. She had run to him for any sort of 
material help, precisely as to a brother, and now he was 
a man and would not be easily set aside. 

He usually drove her to meeting on Sunday, and they 
loitered on the shady stretches of the coolly roads. He 
frequently put his arm around her, and she permitted it, 
because it was the way all young lovers, but she really 
never considered him in the light of a possible husband. 

Most of the girls were precocious in the direction of 
marriage, and brought all their little allurements to bear 


70 


Leaving Home 71 

with the same purpose which directs the coquetry of a 
city belle. At sixteen they had beaux, at seventeen 
many of them actually married, and at eighteen they 
might often be seen with their husbands, covered with 
dust, clasping wailing babes in their arms ; at twenty 
they were not infrequently thin and bent in the 
shoulders, and flat and stiff in the hips, having degen- 
erated into sallow and querulous wives of slovenly, 
careless husbands. 

Rose was not ready to acknowledge that Carl had 
any claim upon her. 

But Carl was grown to be a stalwart young fellow, 
with the blood and sinew of a man, and the passions of 
a man were developing in his rather thick head. The 
arm which he laid along the buggy-seat was less passive 
and respectful of late. It clutched in upon her at times ; 
though she shook herself angrily free, he merely laughed. 

So matters stood when she told him that the time 
had nearly come for going away to school in Madison. 

“ That’s so ? ” he said, and not much else till the 
next Sunday. With all the week to think about it in, 
he began to ask himself, in current slang, “ Where do I 
come in } ” 

So the next time they drove together he tried again to 
tighten his arm about her while he said : 

‘‘ I ’ll miss you, Rosie.” 

‘‘ So’ll pap,” she said. 

There was a long pause, then he said : What’s 

the use o’ going away anyhow ? I thought you an’ 
me was goin’ to be married when we grew up.” 


72 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


She drew away from him. “We ain’t grown up yet.*’ 

“ I guess we won’t neither of us ever get our growth, 
then,” he said, with a chuckle ; “ you don’t need that 
extra schoolin’ any more’n I do.” 

They rode in silence down the beautiful valley, with 
the gold and purple light of early autumn lying over it. 

“You mustn’t go and forget me off there in Madi- 
son,” he said, giving her a squeeze. 

“Carl, you stop that! You mustn’t do that I I’ll 
jump out o’ the buggy if you do that again ! ” 

There was genuine anger in her voice. 

“ Why, it’s all right, Rosie ; ain’t we engaged ” 

“ No, we’re not, and we never will be, either.” 

There was a note in her voice that struck through 
even Carl’s thick thought. He did not reply, but con- 
tinued to dwell upon that reply until its entire meaning 
came to him. Then his face became pitiful to see. 
It was usually round and red, but now it looked long 
and heavy and bitter. He was so infertile of phrases 
he could only say : 

“ Then we might as well drive right back home.” 

“Well, you made me say it,” she replied in a softer 
tone, being much moved by the change in his face. “ I 
like you, Carl, but I’m not a-goin’ to promise anything. 
I’ll see when I come back, after I graduate.” 

They drove on. She was not much more of a talker 
than he, and so they rode in a silence that was sullen on 
Carl’s part. At the gate she relented a little. “ Won’t 
you come in, Carl ? ” 

“ No, I guess not,” he said, shortly, and drove off. 


Leaving Home 73 

Rose went into the house feeling more and more 
the injustice of her anger. “ If he hadn’t pinched me 
like that,” she said to herself in apology. 

She went to work at her packing again, putting in 
things she would not possibly have any use for. As she 
worked the ache and weariness at her heart increased, 
and when they called her to supper the tears were fall- 
ing again like a shower. It was a silent and miserable 
meal, though the doors and windows were open and the 
pleasant sounds of the farm-yard came in, and the red 
light of the setting sun shone in, magically warm and 
mellow. 

John ate slowly, his eyes fixed on his plate. Rose ate 
not at all and looked out of the window, with big tears 
rolling childishly down her cheeks. She didn’t want to 
go at all now. Her home seemed all at once so com- 
fortable and happy and safe! 

John looked up and saw her tears, and immediately 
he, too, was choked and could not eat. 

‘‘ There, there! Rosie, don’t cry. We’ll be all right, 
and you’ll be back almost ’fore you know it. June 
comes early in the summer, you know.” They were 
both so childlike they did not consider it possible to 
come home before the year was up. She came around 
and knelt down by his side and buried her face on his 
knees. 

“ I wish I hadn’t promised to go,” she wailed ; “ I 
don’t want to go one bit. I want to stay with you. ’ 

He understood her feeling and soothed her and diverted 
her, though tears would have been a relief to him. 


74 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

She went with him out to the barn, and she cried over 
the bossies and the horses, and said good-by to them 
under her breath, so that her father might not hear. 

When she went to bed she lay down disconsolate and 
miserable. Oh, it was so hard to go, and it was hard 
not to go. Life was not so simple as it had seemed 
before. Why did this great fear rise up in her heart ? 
Why should she have this terrible revulsion at the last 
moment ? So she thought and thought. Her only stay 
in the midst of chaos was Dr. Thatcher. William De 
Lisle was very far away, like a cold white star. 

Just as she made up her mind that she could not sleep, 
she heard her father call her. 

“ Rose, time to get up ! ” 

Her heart contracted with a painful spasm that made 
her cry out. The time had come for action — mo- 
mentous, irrevocable action, like Napoleon’s embarking 
from Elba for France. 

It was very chill and dark. She rose and groped 
about for a light. Her teeth chattered with cold and it 
seemed to her that a chill was upon her as she dressed 
hurriedly and went down. 

John and her aunt were already at the table and Rose 
slipped into her seat, white and silent. It was still dark 
and the lighted lamps made it seem like a midnight 
meal. 

John was strenuously cheerful. “ We have to get up 
early if we get that seven o’clock train,” he said. 

“ Better take some coffee anyhow,” urged Mrs. Diehl. 

“ Oh, I can’t eat a thing,” Rose insisted. 


Leaving Home 75 

“Don’t worry her, sis,” interposed John. “She’ll 
feel like it later.” 

While John went to get the team Rose got on her 
things and walked about, uttering a little moaning 
sound, like a babe in delirium, which was terrible to 
hear, and Mrs. Diehl lost patience at last. 

“ Stop that fuss ! Good land ! anybody’d think you 
was goin’ to die dead as a hammer, the way you take 
on, and after all the time we’ve had gettin’ you ready. 
I declare to goodness I never see such a young ’un in 
all my born days. I will be glad to get rid of you 
already ! ” 

This was pungent medicine to Rose, and thereafter 
she uttered no word of grief, and punished her aunt 
by refusing to say good-by at the door, which grieved 
John very much. “You folks had a tiff this morning 
a’ready ? ” 

Rose did not reply. 

It was cold and damp. The wind pushed against 
their faces with a touch as if of wet palms. The 
horses splashed along in pools of water, and out of the 
dim light the hills rose against the sky full of soft 
sprawling rain-clouds. 

They rode in silence. Rose’s eyes reflected no more 
her splendid visions of the world. All was dark and 
rainy now. Home and peace and comfort were all 
behind her. She was so miserable it seemed as if she 
must cry out, but her aunt’s contemptuous words helped 
her to maintain her silence. 

John talked a little about the trains on the road, and 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


76 

the weather, but talk was an effort to him also. As he 
rode he thought the days all over again. He felt as if 
he were losing his heart, but he did not waver. 

He helped Rose into the car and then stooped and 
hugged her hard without kissing her, and so stumbled 
out again, while she sat white and rigid, moaning 
piteously. And so the familiar things passed away. 

The sun came out after a while, and covered the earth 
with a glory that found its way into the girfs heart. 
She ceased to sob, and the ache passed out of her throat, 
although the shadow still hung about her eyes. 

The car interested her. It seemed a palatial carriage 
to her, and of enormous size. She figured out the 
number of people it would hold, and wondered how the 
seats which were turned the other way came to be so. 
The car was mainly occupied by men in careless cloth- 
ing. Everybody seemed sleepy and unkempt, and she 
wondered where they all came from, and where they 
were going, and so speculating, lost something of her 
poignant sorrow. 

At last came a moment of quiet elation. She was 
going out into the world ! the enormous, the incredible 
had happened ! She was going to Madison, the State 
capital. The speed of the train, which seemed to her 
very great, aided her to realize how swiftly she was 
getting into the world. The fields and farms whirled 
by in dizzying fashion, and the whistle of the engine 
was like the furious, defiant neigh of a rushing horse. 
It was all on a scale more splendid than her dreams. 

In the midst of her exultant moment the brakeman 


Leaving Home 77 

came through and eyed her with an insolent glare. She 
started as if a hot iron had touched her flesh, and 
shrank back into herself, like a scared mollusk. The 
man passed on, but her exultation was gone. 

She noticed that the hills grew lower as they sped 
southward, and queer rocks rose squarely up from the 
flat lands, which were covered with wild swamps of 
small trees, out of which long skeletons of dead pines 
lifted with a desolate eflPect. 

There were several tunnels, and every time they went 
through one Rose clung to the seat in terror. Some im- 
pudent young men in the rear of the car smacked their 
lips to represent kisses, and laughed boisterously afterward, 
as if that were a very good joke indeed. 

The conductor, when he came through the next time, 
eyed her closely and smiled broadly. She did not un- 
derstand why he should smile at her. After he had 
been through the car several times he came and sat 
down by her. 

“ Nice day, ain’t it ? Live in Madison ? ” 

“ No, sir,” she replied, looking away. She did not 
want to say more, but some power made her add, “ I 
am going to school there.” 

He seemed pleased. 

“ Ah, hah ! Going to the university ? ” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ Oh, I see.” He put his knee against the back of 
the seat in front of her and took an easy position. 

“ It’s a nice town. Wish I could stop ofF and help 
you find a boarding-place.” 


78 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 


The brakeman, coming through, winked at the con- 
ductor as if to say : ‘‘ I like your ‘ mash,’ ” and the 
terror and shame of her position flashed over Rose, 
flushing her from head to foot. Her eyes filled with 
angry tears, and she looked out of the window, not 
knowing what to do. She was so helpless here, for she 
was out in the world alone. 

The conductor went on serenely, knowing well how 
scared and angry she was. 

“Yes, sir; it’s a fine little town. Great place for 
boating, summer or winter. You’ll see a hundred ice- 
boats out on Monona there all at once. I’ve got a 
cousin there who has a boat. He’d be glad to take you 
out if I’d tell him about you.” 

“ I don’t want to know him,” she said, in what she 
intended to be a fierce tone, but which was a pitifully 
scared tone. 

The conductor knew that the brakeman was observ- 
ing him, and in order to convey the impression that he 
was getting on nicely he bent forward and looked 
around into the girl’s face. 

“ Oh, you’d like him first rate.” 

Rose would have screamed, or broken out into some 
wild action had not the engine whistled. This gave 
the conductor an excuse to give the talk up for the 
moment. 

“ She’s a daisy and as green as grass,” he said to the 
brakeman. Her innocence seemed to place her in his 
hand. 

For the next hour they persecuted the girl with their 


Leaving Home 79 

attentions. First one and then the other came along 
the aisle and sat down beside her. And when she put 
her valise there, blocking the seat, the brakeman sat on 
the arm-rest and tormented her with questions to which 
she gave no answer. 

Just after Pine City a cool, firm woman’s voice 
sounded in her ear : “ May I sit with you ? ” 

She looked up and made room for a handsome, 
middle-aged woman, in a neat travelling dress. 

“It’s a shame !” she said. “I’ve just got in, but 
I saw at once how those men were torturing you. 
Strange no one in the car could see it and take your 
part.” 

Rose turned gratefully, and laid her head on the 
lady’s stalwart shoulder and cried. 

“There, there, no harm done! You must learn 
to expect such things from some men. It would be 
libellous on the brutes to call them beasts.” She said 
a great many things which Rose hardly understood, but 
her presence was strong and helpful and Rose liked her 
very much. 

“ How far are you going ? ” 

Rose told her in a few words. 

“ Ah, are you ? You could not have made a better 
choice. Who sends you there — pardon me ? ” 

“Dr. Thatcher.” 

“Dr. Thatcher! Well, well, how things come about. 
I know the Doctor very well.” 

“ Do you ? I’m going to live there for a while.” 

Rose was almost smiling now. 


8o 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


‘‘Well, you couldn’t be more fortunate. You’ll get 
into the most progressive home in the city.” 

From this on they had a royal good time. Rose grew 
happier than she had been for weeks. There was some- 
thing very assuring about this woman, and her sweet 
smile and soft gray eyes seemed very beautiful to the 
lonely child. 

When the conductor came down the aisle again Rose’s 
protector met his eye with a keen, stern glance. 

“Young man, I shall have you discharged from this 
road.” 

The astonished cur took her card, and when he read 
the name of a famous woman lawyer of Milwaukee his 
face fell. 

“ I didn’t mean any harm.” 

“ I know better. I shall see Mr. Millet, and see that 
he makes an example of you.” 

Rose was awed by her calm and commanding voice. 

“ It has been our boast that American girls could 
travel from east to west in our broad land, and be safe 
from insult, and I’m not going to let such a thing pass.” 

She returned to her gentle mood presently, and began 
to talk of other things. 

As they neared the town where they were to part 
company, the elder woman said : 

“ Now, my dear, I am to get off here. I may never 
see you again, but I think I shall. You interest me 
very much. I am likely to be in Madison during the 
year, and if I do I will look you up. I am getting old 
though, and things of this life are uncertain to us who 


Leaving Home 8i 

wear gray hair. I like that forehead on you, it tells me 
you are not to be a victim to the first man who lays his 
hand on you. Let me give one last word of advice. 
Don’t marry till you are thirty. Choose a profession 
and work for it. Marry only when you want to be a 
mother.” 

She rose. “You don’t understand what I mean now, 
but keep my words in your mind. Some day you will 
comprehend all I mean — good-by. ” Rose was tearful 
as Mrs. Spencer kissed her and moved away. 

Rose saw her on the steps and waved her hand back at 
her as the train drew away. Her presence had been 
oppressive in spite of her kindness, and her last words 
filled the girl’s mind with vague doubts of life and of men. 
Everything seemed forcing her thoughts of marriage to 
definiteness. Her sex was so emphasized, so insisted upon 
by this first day’s experience in the world, that she leaned 
her head against the window and cried out : “ Oh, I wish 
I was dead.” 

But the train shot round the low green hills fringed with 
the glorious foliage of the maples, the lake sparkled in the 
afternoon’s sun, the dome of the capitol building loomed 
against the sky, and the romance and terror of her entry 
into the world came back to her, driving out her more 
morbid emotions. She became again the healthy country 
girl to whom Madison was a centre of art and society 
and literature. 


CHAPTER IX 


ROSE ENTERS MADISON 

The train drew up to a long platform swarming with 
people, moving anxiously about with valises in hand, 
broad-hatted and kindly ; many of them were like the 
people of “ the Coolly. ” But the young hackmen ter- 
rified her with their hard, bold eyes and cruel, tobacco- 
stained mouths. 

She alighted from the car, white and tremulous with 
fear, and her eyes moved about anxiously. When they 
fell upon Thatcher the blood rushed up over her face, 
and her eyes filled with tears of relief. 

“ Ah, here you are ! ” he said, with a smile, as he 
shook her hand and took her valise. “ I began to fear 
you’d been delayed. ” 

She followed him to the carriage with downcast eyes. 
Her regard for him would not permit her to say a word, 
even when they were seated together in the carriage and 
driving up the street. Her breath came so quick and 
strange the Doctor noticed it. 

“ A little bit excited about it, aren’t you ? ” he smilingly 
said. “ I remember how I felt when I went to Chicago 
the first time. I suppose this seems like Chicago to 

82 


Rose Enters Madison 83 

you. How did you leave the people in the coolly, all 
well ? ” 

“Yes, sir,” she replied, without looking up. 

“ Well, now you are about to begin work. Fve got 
everything all arranged. You are to stay with us for the 
present at least. My niece is with us and you will get 
along famously, I know. How do you like my horse ? ” 
he asked, in his effort to relieve the tension. 

She studied the horse critically. 

“ First rate ! ” she said at last. 

He laughed. “Well, I am glad you like him, for I 
know you are a judge. He is a pretty good stepper, too, 
though he hasn’t quite enough fling in his knees, you 
notice. I’ll let you drive him some time.” 

He drew up before a pretty cottage, set in the midst 
of a neat lawn. It was discouragingly fine and hand- 
some to the girl. She was afraid it was too good for her 
to enter. 

A very blond young girl came dancing out to the 
block. 

“ Oh, Uncle Ed, did Rose — ” Rose suddenly ap- 
peared. 

“ This is Rose. Rose, this is our little chatterbox.” 

“ Now, Uncle Ed ! Come right in. Rose. I’m going 
to call you Rose, mayn’t I ? ” 

Mrs. Thatcher, a tall thin woman, welcomed Rose in 
sober fashion, and led the way into the little parlor, 
which seemed incredibly elegant to the shy girl. 

She sat silently while the rest moved about her. 
There was a certain dignity in this reserve, and both 


84 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

Mrs. Thatcher and Josie were impressed by it. She 
was larger and handsomer than either of them, and that 
gave her an advantage, though she did not realize it. 
She was comparing, in swift, disparaging fashion, her 
own heavy boots with their dainty soft shoes, and won- 
dering in what way she could escape from them. 

“Josie, take her right up to her room,” said Mrs. 
Thatcher, “and let her get ready for dinner.” 

“ Yes, come up, you must feel like having a good 
scrub.” 

Rose flushed again, wondering if her face had grown 
grimy enough to be noticeable. 

The young girl led Rose into a pretty room with light 
green walls, and lovely curtains at the windows. There 
were two dainty little beds occupying opposite corners. 

“We’re to occupy this room together,” said Josie. 
“ This is my dressing-case and that’s yours.” 

She bustled about helping Rose to lay off her things, 
pouring water for her, talking on and on with gleeful flow. 

“ I’m awful glad you’ve come. I know we’ll be 
just as thick ! I wish you were in my classes though, 
but you won’t be, so Doctor says. Don’t you think 
this is a nice room ? ” 

Rose washed her hands as quickly as possible because 
they looked so big and dingy beside the supple white- 
ness of Josephine’s. She felt dusty and coarse and 
hopeless in the midst of this exquisite room, the most 
beautiful chamber she had ever seen. 

Her eyes, moving about, fell upon a picture which 
had the gleam of white limbs in it. Josephine followed 


Rose Enters Madison 85 

her look. “ Oh, that’s young Sampson choking the 
lion. I just love that ; isn’t he lovely .? ” 

Rose blushed and tried to answer, but could not. 
The beautiful splendid limbs of the young man flamed 
upon her with marvellous appeal. It was beautiful, and 
yet her training made her think it somehow not to be 
talked about. 

Josephine led the way downstairs into the little par- 
lor, which was quite as uncomfortably beautiful as the 
bed-room. The vases and flowers, and simple pictures, 
and the piano, all seemed like the furnishings of the 
homes she had read about in stories. 

But dazed as she was she kept her self-command, at 
least she kept silence and sat in sombre, almost sullen 
dejection amid it all. Mrs. Thatcher hardly knew 
what to think of her, but the Doctor comprehended her 
mood fairly well for he had passed through similar 
experiences himself. He talked to her for a few min- 
utes about her plans, and then they went out to dinner. 

Rose entered the dining-room with a still greater fear 
in her heart. She longed to run away and hide. 

“ Oh, I don’t know anything ! ” was the bitter cry 
welling up in her throat again and again, and she nearly 
cried out upon the impulse. 

The Doctor liked to have his dinner at one, and so 
Rose found two knives and two forks at her plate, and 
two spoons also. She had read in stories of “ formal 
dinners,” and this seemed likely to be her greatest trial. 
She sat very stiff and silent as the soup was brought on 
by the Norwegian girl. 


86 


Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly 

She took the plate as it was handed to her, and 
handed back the one which was turned down with the 
napkin on top of it. The Norwegian girl smiled 
broadly and handed them both back. Then Rose saw 
her mistake and the hot blood swept over her brown 
face in a purple wave. 

The Doctor and his wife passed it in silence. Josie 
fortunately was talking to the cat and did not see it. 

Rose could hardly touch her soup, which was deli- 
cious, and her rebellious soul was filled with a desire to 
escape as soon as possible. 

Which of the knives should she use first, and what 
was the extra little plate for, were the disturbing ques- 
tions. She could use a fork, but she was afraid of 
betraying herself in the minutiae of the service. As a 
matter of fact she got along very well, but of that she 
had no knowledge. 

Some way she lived through the dainty dinner, 
scarcely tasting anything of it. At the close of it Mrs. 
Thatcher said : 

“Wouldn’t you like to lie down for a little while? 
Aren’t you tired ? ” Rose hardly knew what weariness 
was, but she assented because she wished to be alone. 

“ I ’ll call you at three, may I ? ” asked Josie, who 
was wildly in love with Rose already. 

“ Oh, isn’t she big and splendid, but she’s queer,” 
she said when she came down. 

“ That’ll wear off,” said the Doctor. “ She feels a 
little strange now. I know all about it. I went from 
a farm to the city myself.” 


Rose Enters Madison 


87 

Rose hardly dared lie down on the spotless bed. A 
latent good taste enabled her to perceive in every detail 
harmony of effect, and that she was the one discordant 
note in the house. “ Oh, how dirty and rough and 
awkward I am ! ’’ was her inward cry. 

Looking out of the window she saw a couple of 
ladies come out of a large house opposite and walk 
down toward a carriage which waited at the gate. The 
ladies held their dresses with a dainty action of their 
gloved hands as they stood for a moment in consulta- 
tion. (How graceful their hats were !) Then they 
entered the carriage. 

As they gathered their soft robes about their limbs 
and stooped to enter the door, the flexile, beautiful line 
of waist and hip and thigh came out modestly. Their 
gaiters were of the same color as their dresses. This 
was most wonderful of all. 

The ladies were a revelation of elegance and grace to 
the farmer’s daughter. Such unity and completeness of 
attire was unknown to her before and she looked down 
at her red dress which Mattie Teel had cut out for her, 
and she realized all its deformity. The sleeves didn’t 
fit as Josie’s did. It never did hang right ; it just 
wrinkled all around the waist, and hung in bunches and 
she knew it. And her hat, made over from her last 
winter’s hat was awful — just awful ! 

She might just as well die or go back home, and 
never go out of the coolly again. She was nothing but 
a great country gawk, anyway. 

In this bitter fashion she raged on, lying face down- 


88 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

ward on the sofa until she heard dancing steps, and 
Josie crying out : “ May I come in ? ” 

“ Yes,” Rose coldly answered. 

‘‘ Oh, you’ve been having a good cry, I know ! I 
just like to go off and have a good cry that way. It 
makes your eyes red, but you can fix that. Just sit still 
now and let me see what I can do.” 

She bustled about and Rose let her bathe her face 
with cool water and cologne, and fuss about. Her little 
fingers were like a baby’s and she murmured and gurgled 
in the goodness of her heart like a kitten. Rose actually 
fell asleep under her touch. 

Josie stopped astonished and startled for a moment, 
and then tip-toed out of the room like a burglar, and told 
Mrs. Thatcher all about it. 

“ And oh, auntie, she’s very poor, isn’t she ? Her 
clothes ” 

“Tut,” warned Mrs. Thatcher, “you must be careful 
not to notice that. Edward, is she so very poor ? ” 

The Doctor, seated at his desk in the little office, 
looked up a moment. 

“No, I don’t think so. It is lack of judgment partially. 
A little tact and taste will fix her all right. Dutcher is 
fairly well-to-do, and she is all he has. He wrote me to 
get her what she needed, but I’ll leave that to you girls.” 

Josie danced with delight. Buying things for your- 
self was fun, but buying for another was ecstasy ! 

“The poor child hasn’t a dress that she can wear 
without alteration, and she is such a splendid creature, 
too. I can’t conceive how they failed to fit her.” 


Rose Enters Madison 


89 

“ It seems to me that putting her beside Josie is 
pretty hard on her. I am afraid you are not conversant 
with the wardrobe of farmers’ girls.” 

“Well, I didn’t suppose — and the other room is so 
small.” 

“Oh, well, it all depends upon Josie. Josie, come 
here.” 

The girl rose up, and he put his arm around her. 

“ Now, my kitten, you must be very careful not to 
allude to any little mistakes Rose makes.” 

“ Oh, Uncle Ed — you know ” 

“Yes, I know chatterboxes mean all right but they 
forget. Now, Rose is going to be a great scholar, and 
she is going to be a lady, very soon, too; but she is 
awkward, now, and my little girl mustn’t make it hard 
for her.” 

After Josie went out, Thatcher said : 

“ I know just how Rose feels. I went through it 
myself. It’s hard, but it won’t hurt her, only don’t try 
to talk it over with her. If she’s the girl I think she is, 
she’ll work the whole matter out in a week or two, her- 
self. If she’s rested, ask her to come down.” 

Rose came into the Doctor’s office in a numb sort of 
timidity, for there was a great change in the Doctor. 
He did not seem the same as when he sat in the school- 
room. She couldn’t describe it, but there was something 
in his voice which awed her. He was now surrounded 
by his professional books and tools, which gave him dig- 
nity in her eyes. 

“ Sit down. Rose,” he said, “ I want to talk with you. 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


90 

Pve had a letter from your father about you and youi 
expenses/’ 

And then, in some way, she never knew exactly how, 
he talked away her bitterness and gave her hope and 
comfort. He advised about books, and said : “ And 
you’ll need some little things which Bluff Siding doesn’t 
keep. Mrs. Thatcher will drive you up town to-morrow 
and you can get what you need. Your father has de- 
posited some money here to pay your expenses. I am 
going over to University Hill to make a call; perhaps 
you’d like to go.” 

She assented, and went to get her hat. 

It was the largest town she had ever seen and the 
capitol was wonderful to her, set in its shaded park, 
where squirrels ran about on the velvet green of the 
grass. The building towered up in the sky, just as she 
had seen it in pictures. Swarms of people came and 
went along the hard, blue-black paths, and round it the 
teams moved before the stores of the square. It was all 
mightily impressive to her. 

They passed the Public Library, and the Doctor said : 

“ You’ll make great use of that, I imagine.” 

She could not make herself believe that. She saw 
students coming and going on the street, and they all 
seemed very gay and well dressed. 

“All this will trouble you for a little while,” the 
Doctor said. “When I came to the University the 
first time I was as uneasy as a cat in a bathtub. I 
thought everybody was laughing at me, but, as a matter 
of fact, nobody paid any attention to me at all. Then 


Rose Enters Madison 91 

I got mad, and I said, ‘ Well, Fll make you pay attention 
to me before Pm done.’ ” The Doctor smiled at her 
and she had the courage to smile back. It was wonder- 
ful how well he understood her. 

He drove her around the Lake shore. It was beauti- 
ful, but in her weakness the more beautiful anything 
was the more it depressed her. The Doctor did not 
demand speech of her, well knowing she did not care to 
talk. 

“ Pm not mistaken in the girl,” he said to his wife 
when they were alone. “She has immense reserve 
force — I feel it. Wait until she straightens up and 
broadens out a little, you’ll see! There’s some half- 
savage power in her, magnetism, impelling quality. I 
predict a great future for her if ” 

“ If what ? ” 

“ If she don’t marry. She is passionate, wilful as a 
colt. It seems impossible she has come thus far with- 
out entanglement. She’s going to be very handsome 
when she gets a little more at ease. I thought her a 
wonderful creature as she sat in that school-room, with 
the yellow sun striking across her head. She appeared 
to me to have destiny in her favor.” 

“ She’s fine, but I think you’re over-enthusiastic, 
Edward. ” 

“Wait and see. She isn’t a chatterbox like Josie, 
that is evident. ” 

“ In fact, my dear, ” he went on to say after a silence, 
“ I should like to adopt her — I mean, of course, take a 
paternal interest in her. She has appealed to me very 


92 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

strongly from the first. You can be a mother to Josie 
and ril be a father to Rose. ” 

There was something sombre under his smiling utter- 
ance of these words. Mrs. Thatcher’s eyes did not meet 
his, and there was a silence. At last the Doctor said : 

“ The girl’s physical perfection is wonderful. Most 
farmers’ girls are round in the shoulders, and flat in the 
hips, but Rose has grown up like a young colt. Add 
culture and ease to her and she’ll mow a wide swath, 
largely without knowing it, for the girl is incapable of 
vanity. ” 

The wife listened with a brooding face. Rose’s 
splendid prophecy of maternity oppressed her in some 
way. 

When the girls went up to bed, terror and homesickness 
and depression all came back upon Rose again. She sat 
down desolately upon the little cream-and-gold chair and 
watched Josie as she pattered about taking down her hair 
and arranging it for the night. She could not help noting 
the multitude of bottles and little combs and powder-puffs 
and boxes and brushes which Josie gloated over, seeing 
that her visitor was interested. 

They were presents, she said, and named the giver of 
each. It was a revelation to Rose of the elegancies of a 
dainty, finicky girl’s toilet, and when she thought of the 
ragged wash-brush and wooden-backed hair-brush and the 
horn comb which made up her own toilet set, she grew 
hot and cold with shame. 

Josephine was delighted to have someone sit in 
admiration of her, and displayed all her paces. She 


Rose Enters Madison 


93 


brushed her hair out with her ivory-backed brush, and 
laid out all her beautiful underwear, trimmed with lace 
and embroidered in silk. She did it without malice, but 
Rose thought of her worn cotton things, shapeless and 
ugly. She never could undress before Josephine in the 
world ! 

She delayed and delayed until Josie had cuddled down 
into her bed with her little pink nose sticking out, and 
her merry eyes blinking like the gaze of a sleepy kitten. 
Rose waited, hoping those bright eyes would close, but 
they would not. At last a desperate idea came to her. 
She sprang up and went to the gaslight. 

“ How do you put this out? ” she asked. 

Josie gurgled with laughter. “Just turn that thing- 
umbob underneath. Yes, that — turn it quick — that’s 
right. Oh, isn’t it dark ! But you aren’t undressed 
yet, and the matches are out in the bath-room.” 

Rose was more at her ease in the dark. 

“ Never mind, I can get along in the dark. I’m 
used to it.” She loosened the collar of her dress, slipped 
off her shoes, and lay down on the bed, bitter and 
rebellious. 

When Josie awoke in the morning the country girl 
was awake and fully dressed, and reading a book by the 
window. 

The wrinkly red dress could not utterly break up the 
fine lines of her firm bust and powerful waist, and the 
admiring little creature hopped out of bed and stole 
across the room, and threw her arms about Rose. 

“ How big and beautiful you are ! ” 


94 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

These wonderful words ran into the country girl’s 
blood like some wonderful elixir. To be beautiful 
made some amends for being coarse and uncultured. 
As she had never felt abasement before, so she had 
never felt the need of being beautiful until now. 

She turned a radiant, tearful face to Josie, and seized 
her hands. 

‘T — I like you — oh, so much ! ” 

“ I knew we’d be friends,” cried the little one, danc- 
ing about. “ And you’ll let me go and help you buy 
your things, won’t you ? ” 

“ I’ll be glad to have you — I’m such a gawk. I 
don’t know anything at all that I ought to know.” 

“You’re just splendid. I’m the one who don’t know 
anything.” 

Then they entered upon a day of shopping. They 
toiled like ants and buzzed like bees. 

Rose came home at night all worn out, discouraged, 
and dumb as an Indian. She had submitted to her fate, 
but she was mentally sore, lame, and confused. She no 
longer cared whether Josie saw her poor wardrobe or 
not, and she went to sleep out of utter fatigue, her eyes 
wet with tears of homesickness. All she hoped for 
seemed impossible and of no account, and to sleep once 
more in her own attic-bed, appeared to be the most de- 
sired thing in the world. 

Her good, vigorous blood built up her courage during 
the night, but she was hardly a sweet and lovable com- 
panion in the days which followed. She (temporarily) 
hated Josie and feared Mrs. Thatcher. Thatcher him- 


Rose Enters Madison 


95 

self, however, was her refuge and stay, she would surely 
have gone home had it not been for him. 

She had a notable set-to with the dressmaker. 

I won’t come here again,” she said, sullenly. “ I 
don’t want any dresses; I’m going home. I’m tired of 
being pulled and hauled.” 

The dressmaker was a brisk little Alsatian, with 
something of the French adroitness in her manner. 

“Oh, my dear young friend! If you only knew! 
I am in despair ! You have such a beautiful figure. 
You would give me such pleasure if I might but finish 
this lovely gown.” 

Rose looked at her from under a scowling, prominent 
forehead. She had never been called beautiful before — 
at least not by one who was disinterested or a stranger, 
and she did not believe the woman. 

The dressmaker passed her hands caressingly over the 
girl’s splendid bust and side. 

“ Ah ! I can make myself famous if I may but fit 
those lines.” 

Rose softened and put on the gown once more and 
silently permitted herself to be turned and turned about 
like a tin sign, while the little artist (which she was) 
went on with a mouth full of pins, gurgling, murmuring, 
and patting. This was the worst of the worry, and the 
end of all the shopping was in sight. 

The touch of soft flannels upon her flesh, the flow of 
ample and graceful gowns, helped her at once. Her 
shoulders lifted and her bust expanded under properly 
cut and fitted garments. Quickly, unconsciously, she 


96 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

became herself again, moving with large, unfettered 
movements. She dominated her clothing, and yet her 
clothing helped her. Being fit to be seen, she was not 
so much troubled by the faces of people who scrutinized 
her. 

It was wonderful to see how she took on (in the first 
few weeks) the graces and refinements of her new life. 
She met her schoolmates each day with added ease, and 
came at last to be a leader among them, just as in the 
home coolly. Her strength and grace and mastery they 
felt at once. 

Her heart beat very hard and fast on the first day as 
she joined the stream of students moving toward the 
Central Hall. The maple-trees were still in full leaf 
and blazing color. The sunlight was a magical cataract 
of etherealized gold, and the clouds were too beautiful 
to look at without a choking in the throat. 

As she stepped over the deeply worn stone sill, she 
thought of the thousands of other country girls whose 
feet had helped to wear that hollow, and her heart 
ached with unaccountable emotion. 

Above her on the winding stairway hundreds of noisy 
feet clattered and bounded, and careless voices echoed. 
She mounted in silence. In such wise she entered 
upon the way of knowledge, the way which has no 
returning footsteps, and which becomes ever more 
lonely as the climber rises. 


CHAPTER X 


QUIET YEARS OF GROWTH 

Outwardly her days were uneventful. She came and 
went quietly, and answered her teachers with certainty 
and precision. She was not communicative to her com- 
panions, and came to know but few of them during the 
first term. She watched the trees go sere and bare, and 
calculated on the progress of the farmwork. She won- 
dered if the men were in the corn yet, or whether the 
morning was too cold to plough. She studied the sky to 
see if there were signs of snow. She could not at once 
throw off her daily supervision of the weather and of 
farmwork. 

Her father wrote only at long intervals. His chapped 
and stiffened hands managed the pen-stock but painfully. 
He treated of the farm affairs, the yield of corn, the 
weight of the steers or hogs he had sold, and asked her 
how many turkeys he had best keep over. 

Carl was a still more dilatory correspondent, and he 
meant little to her now anyhow. The Doctor’s domin- 
ion was absolute, and yet there was a subtle change in her 
relation toward him. She no longer blushed in his pres- 
ence, and he seemed older and nearer to her, more like 


97 


98 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


an uncle and adviser. The figure he had been, took its 
place beside that of William De Lisle. More substan- 
tial, and therefore less sweet and mythical. 

Her school life was not her entire intellectual life by 
any means. She had the power of absorbing and mak- 
ing use of every sight and sound about her. She saw a 
graceful action at table or in the drawing-room, and her 
alert mind seized upon it and incorporated it. She did 
not imitate; she took something from everyone, but 
from no one too much. 

Her eyes lost their round, nervous stare, but they 
searched, searched constantly, as was natural for a girl 
of her years and fine animal nature ; but there was brain 
back of it all. The young men knew nothing of her 
searching eyes ; indeed, they thought her cold, and a 
little contemptuous of them. 

Meanwhile their elegance often alienated them from 
her. There were many types not far removed from 
Carl and Henry ; farmers’ boys with some touch of 
refinement and grace, but others there were who had a 
subtle quality, which told of homes of refinement and 
luxury. 

Two wonderful things had come to her. One was 
the knowledge that she was beautiful, which she came 
to understand was the burning desire of all women ; 
and again that she was master of things which had once 
scared her. She discovered that she could wear lovely 
dresses gracefully, and sit at table with ease, and walk 
before her classmates without tremor. She had a feeling 
of power in her heart^ as well as in her fist. 


Quiet Years of Growth 


99 


Her winter was a quiet one. She came and went 
between her classes and her home at Dr. Thatcher’s. 
She studied in her own room or recited to the Doctor 
when he was at leisure. He liked to have the girls 
come into his study when he was not too busy, and while 
he sat pondering the probable effect of cocaine or atro- 
pine in a certain case, the women folks read or talked. 

Those were wonderful hours to the country girl. She 
was a long way from the little cottage on the home farm 
at such times, but Thatcher felt the same beauty and 
power in the face which had attracted him first in 
the old school-house, but enriched by nobler colorings 
now. 

They went sleighing together, with shouting and 
laughter, as if the Doctor were a girl, too. They went 
skating, and once in a while to some entertainment at the 
church. They were not theatre-going people, and the 
lectures and socials of the town and college made up 
their outings. It was the Doctor’s merry interest in 
their doings which made young men almost unnecessary 
to Rose as well as to Josephine. 

Then came spring again ; the southwest wind awoke, 
the snow began to go, the grass showed green in the 
lawns, and Rose’s thoughts turned back toward the 
coolly. There were days when every drop of her blood 
called out for the hills and the country roads, the bleat 
of lambs, the odor of fields, and the hum of bees, but 
she kept on at work. 

Something elemental stirred in her blood as the leaves 
came out. The young men took on added grace and 


lOO 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


power in her eyes. When they came before her in their 
athletic suits, strong and joyous, her eyes dreamed and 
her heart beat till the blood choked her breathing. 

Oh, the beautiful sky ! Oh, the shine and shade of 
leaves ! Oh, the splendor of young manhood ! She 
fought down the dizziness which came to her. She 
smiled mechanically as they stood before her with frank, 
clear eyes and laughing lips, and so, slowly, brain reas- 
serted itself over flesh, and she, too, grew frank and 

gay- 

Then came the vacation. The partings, the bitter 
pain of leaving the young people she had learned to 
love, and, too, came the thought of home. The dear 
old coolly with its peaks and camel humps, and pappa 
John ! He was waiting to see her there ! 

So the pain of leaving her mates was mingled with 
the joy of home-coming. She romped on the grass 
with the young lambs. She followed pappa John about 
as of old, in the fields, while he wondered and marvelled 
at her. She had grown so fine and white and ladylike. 

She was fain to know all the news of the farm, and 
the neighborhood. She felt like kissing all the dear old 
ladies in the coolly. Oh, the old friends were the best 
after all! You could rest on them. They didn’t care 
how you ate soup. They didn’t keep you keyed up to 
company manners all the time. 

She went back to her old dresses and cotton under- 
wear, and went dirty as she liked, and got brown and 
iron-muscled again. 

Carl met her on the road one day and nodded and 


Quiet Years of Growth 


lOI 


drove on, with hurried action of the lines. He still bore 
her rejection of him fresh in mind. It was to his credit 
that he never made use of his youthful intimacy with 
her. He was a man, with all the honesty and sincerity 
and chivalry of a race of gentlemen in his head, slow- 
witted as he was. 


CHAPTER XI 

STUDY OF THE STARS 

She came back each September with delight and exul- 
tation. It was not so much like going to the world’s 
end now, and besides, her father seemed resigned to it. 
Back to the gleam of the lakes, the flaming sunsets, the 
moonlit nights filled with the twang of guitars and the 
floating harmony of fresh boyish voices, back to her girl 
lovers and her books, back to the chalky odor of the rec- 
itation room. 

Ah, but it was so sweet to climb the circular stairway 
again ! The booming roar of the students’ feet did not 
disturb her now. The greetings of the professors, as 
they passed, made her eyes sparkle with pleasure. The 
spirit of the university had established dominion over 
her. 

These were days without care ; days of silent, pleasant 
growth and years of sweet gravity over books and 
wholesome laughter over games. She studied hard, but 
it was a quiet pleasure to study, for she had the power of 
concentration which gives mastery. 

She was never behind, never fagged out with study. 
She had time for the splendor of nature and for the world 


102 


Study of the Stars 


103 


of books. She read more and more each year because 
she felt lacking in literary knowledge. She read the 
books she ought to know — read them religiously. Oc- 
casionally it chanced that the books were those she loved 
to read, but not often. Generally she had to bend to 
them as if they were lessons. 

She read also Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray, a vol- 
ume or two each. Then one day in midwinter it 
chanced she fell upon ‘‘ Mosses from an Old Manse,” 
and thereafter all other books waited. She read this 
wondrous book while she walked home from the library. 

She read it after dinner and put it in her satchel as 
she went to recite. She finished it and secured the 
second volume ; after that she seized upon “ Twice-Told 
Tales,” then the “Scarlet Letter,” and the world of 
woman’s sin and man’s injustice opened to her ! 

She read that terrible book, rebelling against the dark 
picture, raging against the insatiable vengeance of the 
populace who condemned Hester as if she had opened 
the gates of hell in the path of every daughter of New 
England. 

Rose could not understand, then nor thereafter, the 
ferocity of hate which went out against the poor defence- 
less woman. What had Hester done ? The girl 
struggled over the problem, feeling in herself that terrible 
ceaseless urging. Her thoughts were not clear, they 
were still only slightly raised figures in the web of organic 
thought, but she was achieving fundamental conceptions. 

She knew it was wrong, but why it was wrong troubled 
her. The law — yes, but what lay behind the law ? The 


104 Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly 

Mormon had one law, the Turk another. Why was 
this English law better than any other ? Why were 
the animals freer than men ? Their lives were good 
and healthy, they lived in the sunshine and were un- 
troubled. Such were a few of the questions she grappled 
with. 

God only knows the temptations which came to her. 
She had days when all the (so-called) unclean things she 
had ever seen, all the overheard words of men’s coarse 
jests, came back like vultures to trouble her. Sometimes, 
when she walked forth of a morning, the sun flamed 
across the grass with ineffable beauty. The whole earth 
was radiant ; every sound was a song ; every lithe youth 
moved like a god before her, and it was then that some- 
thing deep in her, something drawn from generations of 
virtuous wives and mothers, saved her from the whirlpool 
of passion. 

At such times she felt dimly the enormous difference 
between her own nature and that of Josephine. Joseph- 
ine’s passion was that of a child — while hers was that 
of an imaginative and complex woman. 

She was not a chatterer at any time, but after these 
moods of abnormal gayety she became almost sullen and 
fell upon her lessons with renewed zeal, as a monk flag- 
ellates his rebellious flesh. 

After days of searching with eager eyes, she refused 
to look at any of the young men, answering them but 
crustily or turned quickly away from them, but this did 
not serve to cure her nor to keep the young men away. 

Always at such times William De Lisle’s glorious 


105 


Study of the Stars 

presence drew near in the dusk, insubstantial and lumi- 
nous as a cloud, and she set her teeth in fresh resolve 
to be wise and famous ; to be worthy his look and his 
word of praise. 

She had suitors constantly. Her dark haughty face, 
warm with blood, her erect and powerful figure excited 
admiration among her young classmates, and they courted 
her with the wholesome frankness of sane and vigorous 
manhood. The free and natural intercourse of the col- 
lege kept the young people as wholesome morally as in 
the home circle. 

As the Doctor came to take a different place in her 
love. Rose became open to the attentions of other men. 
Twice during the winter she felt the hand of love upon 
her. In the first instance her eyes sought and found 
among her classmates a young man’s physical beauty, 
and her imagination clothed him with power and mys- 
tery, and she looked for him each day, and life was less 
interesting and purposeful when he was not present. 

She made no open advances, she scarcely needed to, 
for he also saw, and when he came to her and she flushed 
and trembled with weakness, it seemed as if her life had 
at last taken a fixed direction. For a few weeks the 
man was her ideal. She saw him before her constantly. 
She knew his smile, the lift of his eyebrows, the shape 
of his ears, the slope of his shoulders, the sound of his 
voice. She looked at him stealthily from her book. She 
contrived to sit where she could watch every motion. 
She walked down the street with him each day, half 
numb with her emotion. 


io6 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

But this ecstasy did not last. She felt eventually his 
shallowness and narrowness. He was vain and ungen- 
erous. He grew sere and bare of grace and charm like 
the autumn elms, and at last he stood empty and char- 
acterless before her, and her eyes looked over and be- 
yond him, into the blue sky again, and throughout it all 
she kept her place in her classes and no one was aware 
of her passion or her disappointment. 

When she turned away from him he did not grow pale 
and lean. He grew a little vicious and said : “ She is 

too cold and proud for my taste.” 

Her next suitor was a worthy young man who was 
studying law in the town. A fine, manly young fellow, 
who paid court to her with masterly address. He was 
older than she, and a better scholar, and brought to her 
less of the clothes-horse and more of the man than her 
freshly outgrown lover. Before spring began he had 
won great intimacy with her — almost an engagement. 

He was adroit. He did not see her too much, and 
he came always at his best. He appealed to the most 
imaginative side of her nature. She glorified his calling 
as well as his person. He was less handsome than his 
predecessor, but he brought an ample and flowing 
phraseology, and a critical knowledge of farm-life as 
well as of town-life. Once he took her to the court-room 
to hear him plead. 

He took her to the socials and once to the theatre. 
There was his mistake ! The play made a most power- 
ful impression upon her, more powerful than anything 
since the circus at Tyre. 


Study of the Stars 107 

It raised new and wordless ambitions. For the first 
time in her life she saw society dress on the stage. The 
play was one which pretended, at least, to show New 
York and London life. Therefore men in claw-ham- 
mer coats came and went, with strange accents and 
with cabalistic motions of hats and gloves, and women 
moved about with mystic swagger. 

The heroine glowed like a precious stone in each 
act, now sapphire, now pearl, now ruby. She spoke in 
a thick, throaty murmur, and her white shoulders shone 
like silver, and her wide childish eyes were like wells of 
light-diffusing liquid. 

Rose gazed at her with unwearying eyes. Her 
bosom rose and fell as if she had been running, and she 
said in her heart : “/ can do that ! I could stand there 
and do that ! ” 

Then the theme of the play filled her with strange 
new thoughts. These people lived out before her a 
condition which she had read about but which had never 
been discussed in her presence. A husband discovers 
his wife to have been a lover and mother in her girl- 
hood, and in a tempest of self-righteous passion flings 
her to the ground in scorn and horror. 

She clung to his feet pleading for mercy : “ I was so 
young ! ” 

He would not listen. “ Go ! — or no, stay — / will 
go. I make the home over to you, but never look upon 
my face again.” 

While Rose burned with shame and indignation, the 
outraged woman on the stage grew white and stern. 


io8 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

“ Who are you to condemn me so ? ” she asked in 
icy calm. “ Are you the saint you profess to be ? Will 
one offence contain your crime against me ? 

“ What do you mean ? ” thundered the man and 
husband. 

‘‘You know what I mean. In my weakness I was 
stained, ineffaceably ; I admit it — but you, in your 
strength, have you not preyed upon weak women ? 
The law allows you to escape disgrace — nature and 
law force me to suffer with mine.” 

Rose thought of Carl and his courtship with such a 
shudder as one feels in remembering a rescue from an 
abyss. A hundred great confusing questions floated by 
in her mind, like clouds in a mist of rain — formless, 
vast, trailing black shadows beneath them as the cur- 
tain fell. The self-sufficient young lawyer beside her 
said : 

“ There was nothing else for her husband to do but 
just fire her out.” 

Rose heard him but did not reply. She hated him 
for his coarse hard tone and when he laid his hand on 
her arm she shook it off. When he asked her to explain 
she did not reply. He was annoyed also, and so they 
waited in silence for the curtain to rise on the final 
act. 

The wife was sick and dying. The dramatist had 
not the courage to work out his theme. He killed the 
woman in order that the husband should not appear to 
condone and take her to wife again. She died while he, 
magnanimously, forgave her. 


Study of the Stars 109 

As they walked home, her lover, with fatuous insist- 
ence, talked with Rose about the case. He took the 
man’s side. He hinted at the reason — presuming upon 
their intimacy. Men outgrow such experiences, he said ; 
women do not. They are either one thing or the 
other — either pure as angels or black as devils. 

Rose closed her lips tight, and her eyes flamed with 
indignant protest, but she uttered no word in reply. In 
her heart she knew it to be a lie. A woman can set 
her foot above her dead self as well as a man. 

When he tried to kiss her good-by she pushed him 
aside and left him without a word. He, too, was a 
bare and broken ideal. Her heart went back again to 
William De Lisle, as the young eagle goes back to the 
sun-warmed cliff to rest and dream with eyes to the sun. 

That night put her girlhood far away from her. She 
grew years older in the weeks which followed. Her 
mind took up irresistibly one insoluble problem after 
another and wrestled with it in silence. Josie’s chatter 
went on around her like the sound of the swallows in 
the eaves of the old barn at home. 

Her mind was like a piece of inconceivably intricate 
machinery, full of latent and complicated motion. A 
word, a touch, and it set to work, and out of its work- 
ing some fine inner heat and glow developed which 
changed the whole mental and physical equilibrium of 
her nature and she became something else, finer, more 
mysterious, and more alluring — though this she did 
not realize. 

Thereafter the young men of her acquaintance did 


no 


Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly 

not attract her. Her eyes had been raised to higher 
altitudes. She fell upon her books with terrible in- 
dustry, in the hope that they would throw some light on 
her problems and ambitions. 

There was nothing she did not think of during these 
character-forming days. The beauty and peace of love, 
the physical joy of itj the problem of marriage, the 
terror of birth — all the things girls are supposed not to 
think of, and which such girls as Rose must irresistibly 
think of, came to her, tormenting her, shaking her to 
the inmost centre of her nature, and through it all she 
seemed quite the hearty young school-girl she was, for 
this thought was wholesome and natural, not morbid in 
any degree. 

She was a child in the presence of the Doctor, but a 
woman with her suitors. The Doctor helped her very 
much, but in the most trying moments of her life (and 
no man can realize these moments) some hidden force 
rose up to dominate the merely animal forces within. 
Some magnificent inheritance of organic moral purity. 

She was saved by forces within, not by laws without. 
Opportunities to sin always offer in every hour of every 
life. Virtue is not negative, it is positive; it is a 
decoration won by fighting, resisting. This sweet and 
terrible attraction of men and women toward each other 
is as natural and as moral as the law of gravity, and as 
inexorable. Its perversion produces trouble. Love 
must be good and fine and according to nature, else why 
did it give such joy and beauty ? 

Natural as was this thought, she hid it from her 


Ill 


Study of the Stars 

associates. Most women die with it unacknowledged, 
even to their own spoken thought. She would have 
been helped by talk with the Doctor, or at least with 
his wife. But there was a growing barrier between 
Mrs. Thatcher and herself, and the Doctor did not seem 
the same good friend. A change was impending in the 
Doctor’s household and Rose felt it as one forecasts a 
storm. 

When she went home at the close of her second year, 
she had a feeling that she would never again return to 
the old sweet companionship with Dr. Thatcher. He 
was too busy now, apparently, to give her the time he 
once seemed so glad to give. He never asked her to 
ride with him now. She was troubled by it, but con- 
cluded they were tired of her, and so she, too, grew cold 
and reserved. 

:)« * * * * * 

The day she left, the Doctor, after he had driven 
Rose to the train, called his wife into the office. 

‘‘ Sit down a moment, wife, I want to talk with you.” 
He faced her bravely. “ I guess we’d better arrange for 
Rose to go to one of the chapter-houses next year. 
There’s no use beating around the bush — she takes 
up too much of my thought, and you know it and I 
know it.” 

It drew blood to say that. It took manhood to look 
his wife in the eyes then, but he did it. 

‘‘ It isn’t her fault, and it isn’t yours — it isn’t mine, as a 
matter of justice. Rose is just what she’s always been, 
a good, sweet girl — I wouldn’t have her see anything but 


1 12 


Rose of Butcher s Coolly 

friendly interest in my eyes for half my heart — Fm 
afraid she will, so — I guess ” 

He was talking through set teeth. “I wish you’d 
tell her we can’t offer her a home; I can’t do it.” 

He rose and went to his wife. “ My dear, don’t cry 

— you’ve watched this thing come on in brave silence — 
not every wife would have kept silence so long. It 
won’t break up our comradeship, will it, dear ? We’ve 
jogged along so peacefully these fifteen years — we 
ought to overlook a little thing like this ! ” He smiled 
a little, then he stooped and put his arm about her. 

“ Come, give me a kiss, and let’s adopt no more 
handsome girls till I’m sixty-five.” 

She rose and lifted her sad face to his. “ It’s my 
fault, if I ” 

He kissed her and said : “ No more of that ! You’re 
my faithful wife. What helps the matter materially is 
this — Rose thinks of me as a sober old settler now.” 

This ended a delicate matter so far as any outward 
showing ever defined his feeling, but the presence of the 
girl never left him. At night, as he sat at his desk at 
the hour which almost always used to bring Rose down 
from her room to discuss her lessons with him, he grew 
sad and lonely. “ If I had a child,” he said to himself, 
“ I could bear it more easily.” 

When Rose returned, she went into one of the 
cooperative boarding-houses, and slowly drifted away 
from the Doctor and his family, never quite knowing 
why. It puzzled her for a time, and then she forgot it 

— in the fashion of youth. 


CHAPTER XII 


THE GATES OPEN WIDE 

Of what avail the attempt to chronicle those days ? 
They were all happy, and all busy, yet never alike. 
When the sun shone it was beautiful, and when the 
wind roared in the trees and the rain slashed like falling 
sails, it was equally glorious. On clear, crisp, bright 
winter days the air grew magical with bells, and the 
grating snarl of the ice-boat’s rudder was thrilling as a 
lion’s cry. It was apart from the world of care and 
politics and revolution. 

There was fun, whirlwinds of it, at the chapter-house 
when studies were over, and there was fun at the pro- 
fessedly formal girl-banquets, where the chairman arose 
to say, “ Gentlemen, the honor — ” and everybody 
shrieked to see her pull an imaginary chin-whisker. 
There was more fun on winter nights, when loads of 
people packed into the bobtail mule-cars which tinkled 
up the snowy street with wonderful persistency, while 
the passengers trod on each other’s toes and chaffed the 
driver. And O the wonderful nights under the stars, 
walking home with arm fast anchored in a fellow’s grip ! 
And strolls in summer beside the Lake, or dreamy hours 


1 14 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

floating at sunset in a boat which lay like a lily’s petal, 
where skies of orange and purple met water of russet- 
gold and steely-blue. 

And there was the glory of mounting also. One by 
one the formidable mesas of calculations, conjugations, 
argumentations, fell below her feet, and Rose grew tall 
in intellectual grace. She had no mental timidities. 
Truth with her came first, or if not first, certainly she 
had little superstitious sentiment to stand in the way. 
She was still the same impatient soul as when she shook 
her little fist at the Almighty’s lightning. 

It was this calm, subconscious assumption of truth’s 
ultimate harmony with nature’s first cause which de- 
lighted her as she entered its realm of physics and as- 
tronomy. Her enthusiasm for the hopeless study of the 
stars developed into a passion. They both exalted and 
saddened her. 

When she lifted her eyes to them, and the illimitable 
distances of their orbits swept upon her with over- 
whelming power, she felt again the ache in the heart 
which came to her as a child on the blulf-top, when the 
world seemed spread before her feet. When she turned 
her face upward now it was to think of the awful 
void spaces there, of the mysteries of each flaming 
planet, and of the helplessness and weakness of the 
strongest man. 

For a year she plunged into astronomy which had the 
allurement and the sombre aloofness of unrequited love. 
It harmonized well with her restless, limitless inner 
desire. 


”5 


The Gates Open Wide 

These sudden passions for this or that art were signs 
of strength and not of weakness. They sprang out of 
her swift and ready imagination, which enabled her to 
take on the personality of the artist, and to feel his joy 
of power. It was quite normal that she should desire 
to be successively circus rider, poet, and astronomer, 
and yet, now that her graduation was near, she was as 
far from a real decision as ever. 

‘‘What are you going to do after graduation ? ” Josie 
asked one day. 

Rose grew grave. “ I don’t know. Go on studying 
somewhere, I suppose.” 

“ I’m going to have a good time ! ” 

“You’re always having a good time, you little oriole.” 
Rose had come to patronize Josie in these later days. 
“ I envy you so,” she sighed. “ The world is so sim- 
ple for you.” 

“I don’t understand you when you go on like that — 
you’ll come to-morrow and see my new dress, won’t you?” 

Graduation meant for Josephine the chance to wear 
a fetching gown, and be looked at by an immense 
crowd — and one extra man. This was supposed to be 
a secret, but everybody who cared to give it a thought 
knew of it and smiled at her as they would at a child. 
Josie could be nothing else but a child. 

To most of the students graduation-day came rushing 
with sorrowful speed. It meant passing from sunlit 
lanes of maple and lilac out into the bleak highways of 
trade and labor. It meant the beginning of struggle 
with the pitiless ferocity of man and nature. As 


ii6 Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly 

students they were not in the race for subsistence, but 
as citizens and professional men they were to be com- 
petitors in trades and crafts already overflowing. 

As the great day drew near, a tremulous ecstasy came 
into the intercourse of the outgoing students — a joy 
made more precious by its certainty of passing. 

To Rose graduation-day came as the sweetest, sad- 
dest day of her life. It seemed to close a gate upon 
something in her history. The smiling, yet mournful, 
faces of her friends, the wistful eyes of the young men 
who loved her, the rustle of leaves, the gleam of the 
water, the dapple of light and shade on the campus, the 
exaltation of the public moment, all these wondrous 
things rushed upon her like a flood, overwhelming her 
ambitions and desires, powerful as they were. 

At last the books were closed and packed away. 
Graduation was at hand. 

The commencement exercises began with the recep- 
tion in Science Hall. The night fell slowly, and the 
fine new building grew alight story after story, and 
crowds began to stream in. The students led the way, 
rakish, full of airs, except when piloting their parents 
about. The fun had been almost furious all day. 

There were many of the relatives of the students 
present, and often they stood out in sharp contrast with 
the decorations and with the joy of the young people. 
Beautiful girls might be seen leading bent and wrinkled 
fathers and mothers, who had sacrificed all they had for 
them. Rose wished for her father, and passionately 
desired to do something for him. He had written that 


II? 


The Gates Open Wide 

he couldn’t leave the farm, and so she wandered about 
with others, like herself, free. Everywhere the young 
men met her. She never escaped them for a moment, 
their pursuit was relentless. 

The crowd swarmed into each room, where the pro- 
fessors stood beside show-cases, polite and patient, ex- 
hibiting machines, specimens, drawings. Sherbet was 
being served to the guests in the reception room, and 
music could be heard in the lower halls. Everywhere 
was the lisp of feet, the ripple of talk. 

This was considered a bore by many of the pupils, 
for the peace-pipe ceremonial was preparing on the 
campus. Mysteriously, in the deep dusk, a huge heap 
of combustibles had been piled up on the wet grass, and 
one by one the two classes began to gather. There was 
a mutter of voices, a command, then a red flame flashed 
out, and with it the college yell soaring up from a little 
bunch of dark forms; 

« RAH-RAH-RAH-WISCONSIN ! ” 

The stragglers on the walks turned toward the fire, 
like insects. They came in crawling dark lines like 
ants, across the wet grass. They formed a blue-black 
mass, lighted on one side by the orange light of the bon- 
fire. The stars overhead grew green and dim in the 
light of the fire, and the encircling trees of the campus 
came out like silhouettes of purple-green cardboard. 

The class rolled out its carpet for the girls and 
opened its boxes of long clay pipes. It seemed so 
much more important to Rose now that she stood there 


ii8 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

in the centre as one of the graduating class. There 
was not much talk. The two classes lined up and sang 
song after song. Then the boys moved about showing 
the girls how to light their pipes. 

“You want to suck, not blow, on it ! ” a voice called 
out, and everybody laughed dutifully. For a few mo- 
ments all was laughter. The girls tried to assume the 
airs of smokers, and puffed their kinnikinick furiously. 
As they sang “There is a Tavern in our Town” and 
“The Bullfrog in the Pool,” they swung their pipes 
with rakish grace — and their voices floated out and up 
into the wreathing smoke of the fire, as deliciously 
sweet as though their songs were hymns of praise as 
they were hymns of youth. 

The pipes needed constant relighting. In every 
silence some girl cried out : “ Oh, my pipe’s gone 

out ! ” One cried : “ Give me a bite ! ” as if the pipe- 
stem were taffy. 

To Rose the whole ceremony was glorious. It carried 
her out of herself. It gave her a glimpse into the world 
which men keep to themselves, and, besides, she had 
written the speech handing the pipe down to the custo- 
dian of the succeeding class, a really admirable ceremony. 

Here on this spot the red men warred and loved. 
Here, with the sheen of lakes about, and the wild grass 
under their feet, it was beautiful and appropriate that 
they should be remembered by these young Western 
sons and daughters of the white man. 

The mock antagonism between seniors and juniors 
seemed to have great meaning when Tom Harris spoke 


The Gates Open Wide 119 

the lofty phrases she had written for him, standing out- 
lined against the soaring fire like a silhouette of velvet, 
his voice rolling out with lofty suspensive power. 

“ Here on the spot where our fathers have dwelt for 
countless suns and moons we ask for peace. We call 
upon you to bury the hatchet. Forgive and forget; you 
who have scars forgive, and you who have wrongs forget. 
Let all evil spirits be exorcised by the pipe. Here we 
break the arrow. Here we tender the sacred calumet. 
Brothers — sisters, we have spoken ! ’’ 

The fire burned low. As they sat in circles on the 
ground and chanted their songs, the sky grew blacker, 
the trees melted into the darkness, the last wailing 
cadence floated into silence, and then subdued, tender, 
they rose and vanished, in pairs and groups, into the 
darkness like the songs they sang. The class of 189— 
had entered upon its long, long trail, some to the plains 
of failure, some to the mountains of victory. 

This quaint and suggestive custom received new 
strength from the oration which Rose contributed. All 
felt its power and beauty. To the girls the whole 
ceremony was a rare and delicious piece of audacity and 
did them good. It gave them something to look back 
upon with laughter, into which a sigh and a little catch- 
ing of the breath might also come. 

Something elemental and primitive came to Rose amid 
all the laughter and song. What was she more than the 
swart women who had lived here and been wooed of 
men? Was there not something magnificent in their 
frank following of the trail of pure passion? They 


120 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

loved, and bore children, and ground at the corn-mills, 
and died as the female bison died, and other women 
came after them to do like unto them, to what 
end ? 

Some such questions, vague, ever shadowy, formless, 
moved Rose, as she lay down to sleep that night. Out- 
side a mandolin twanged — the boys were serenading 
her, but she had not the wish to see them. She did not 
go to the window, as the other girls did, deliciously ex- 
cited, almost hysteric with the daring of being possibly 
seen in their nightgowns. She kept sombre silence, 
stirred by profounder emotions than they were capa- 
ble of. 

She thought of William De Lisle but seldom now. 
In open daylight she was a little ashamed of her idola- 
try, but on nights like these, when love-songs and moon- 
light fused together, his figure came before her, not so 
clear a personality now, but as a type of beauty, as a 
centre of dreams, of something wild and free and splen- 
did — something she was to attain to some good day. 
She had no thought of attaining him, but someone like 
unto him. Someone who was grand as her dream of 
heroes and loyal as her father. 

It was characteristic of her that while the lovers sing- 
ing without, made her companions utter hysterical laugh- 
ter, she was sad and wished to be alone. Their desires 
were on the surface, shifting, sparkling, seeking kisses. 
Hers was dark, and deep down, sorrowful, savage, 
prophetic. Love with her was a thing not to be 
uttered at all. She silenced all jests about it, and 


The Gates Open Wide 121 

all familiarity on the part of her suitors she had put 
away. 

During her first year she had allowed her lover to take 
her hand, as Carl used to do, because it seemed the usual 
thing, but after breaking off that entanglement she reso- 
lutely set to work to study, and no man had since con- 
sidered himself her lover. To permit a caress now meant 
all the world to her. It meant change, undoing of plans, 
throwing away ambitions. It meant flinging herself to 
the immemorial sacrifice men had always demanded of 
women. 

There were times when she felt the impulse to do 
this. She felt it that night as the clear voices of the 
serenaders came floating in at her window. What did 
it matter ? What could she do in the mighty world ? 
What did the Indian girl, when her lover sang from his 
canoe among the water-lilies in the lake ? Why not go 
to one of these good, merry young men and be a wife ? 
What did it matter — her ambition — her hope ? “ I 

will,’’ she said, and a wild rush of blood choked her 
breathing, “ I’ll end it all.” 

But the singing died away, the moonlight vanished 
out of the room, and the passionate longing and tumult 
of her blood grew slowly quiet, and she slept. 

When the sun rose there was no man in her world 
who could have won her consent to marriage. Her 
ambitions rose like the sun, buoyant as young eagles, 
while the singers of the night before were hapless fire- 
flies, tangled in the dewy grass, their love-light dim, 
their singing lost in silence. 


122 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

She was not done with this problem, however. She 
saw in one man’s eyes something to be answered. She 
had her answer ready, though she hoped to escape the 
ordeal. He hovered close about her all the morning, 
and came by the chapter-house for her, but she had 
gone to the chapel. 

She felt a little guilty toward him. She had attended 
concerts with him. She had accepted his company now 
and again because she liked him and because — well, 
it was convenient, and by selecting him she escaped the 
attentions of others. She had seemed to acquiesce in his 
proprietorship of her, and yet always when alone she had 
tried to show him that they could be nothing more than 
friends. This he had persistently misunderstood. 

Being almost the tallest of her classmates, she led the 
march into the chapel for the final ceremonies, a splen- 
did and terrible moment, toward which they had looked 
for weeks, and for which they had elaborately planned 
dresses and procedure. 

It was all so wistfully beautiful. The cool, spacious 
hall filled with hushed people ; the vivid green trees 
looking in at the windows and the soft air burdened 
with bee songs and the smell of flowers. The June 
sunlight dappled the lawn with marvels of shade and 
shine. The music seemed to wail as they marched, 
and the rustling stir and murmur of comment helped to 
unnerve them all, even the men. 

The speaker looked down upon them with compre- 
hension. He was an Eastern man and an old man, 
also he was a poet. He was just, and he had seen how 


123 


The Gates Open Wide 

wholesome and fine this coeducational school was. 
The day was beautiful to him as to them, and he com- 
prehended their feelings well and looking down into 
their pensive faces, was aware of the sorrowful arching 
of their brows, the sad droop of their lips. 

His shaggy head drooped forward as he talked to 
them, till his kind old face lined with genial wrinkles, 
seemed to grow beautiful and tender and maternal. He 
had reared many children of his own, and he now took 
the young people into his heart. He told them much 
of his life and trials — how work was in the world for 
them ; play, too — but work, hard work, glorious work ! 
work for humanity as well as for themselves. He con- 
veyed to them something of the spirit of altruism into 
which the world seemed about to enter on its orbit as it 
swings through clouds of star-dust. 

They cheered him when he ended, and then the 
president, in brief words, presented their diplomas. 
Among them now were bitten lips, and tremulous chins 
and tearful eyes. The doors had closed behind them 
and they faced the whole world, it seemed. For years 
they had studied here, in storm and sun, but now they 
remembered only the sunlight, all fused and blended 
into one radiant vista. 

At the moment when they rose for their final bene- 
diction, a splendid, snowy cloud sailed across the sun, 
and the room darkened mystically. A shudder of exquisite 
pleasure and pain thrilled Rose, and a little moan 
pushed from her throat; but the shadow lifted, the 
organ sounded out a fine brave strain, and the class of 


124 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

189- was ended. It was now a group of men and 
women facing the open road. 

With low words of greeting and congratulation the 
graduates and their friends lingered about the chapel. 
Slowly it emptied and the hill grew populous again with 
groups of leisurely moving figures. 

There were scholars showing their parents about the 
grounds, there were groups of visiting towns-people, and 
there were the lovers, two and two, loitering, wandering 
(she in dainty white gown, he in cap and jacket), two 
and two in world-old, sex-old fashion. They lay on 
the banks and watched the boats on the gleaming lake 
where other lovers were. They threaded the hill-paths 
where the thrush moved with quick rustle, and the pale 
wood-flowers peered above the fragrant mosses. They 
stood on the beach skipping pebbles, he lithe and laugh- 
ing, she tender, palpitating, wistful and sad, or fitfully 
gay. Everywhere laughter had a solemn sweet under- 
tone; “Good-by!” trembled so close to “I love you!” 

Rose saw young Harris approaching, and a faintness 
took hold upon her limbs. He was at his princeliest 
estate — never would he be handsomer. His summer 
suit set close to his agile and sinewy figure. His 
cap rested lightly on his curly hair. His frank blue 
eyes were laughing, but his lips were tremulous with 
feeling. 

“Well, Rose, all the girls have deserted me so Pm 
glad to find you alone,” he said, but she knew he was 
never deserted. “ Let’s take a walk. The whole 
school seems to be divided off* into teams. Looks as if 


The Gates Open Wide 125 

the whole crowd would trot in double harness, don’t 
it ? ” 

She did not reply, he hardly expected her to do 
so. 

“ Going to the ball with me to-night, aren’t you ? ” 

“ No, I guess not.” 

“ I was in hopes you’d change your mind.” 

‘‘ I can’t dance those new-fangled figures.” 

“ Oh, you’d catch on in a jiffy. You should have 
gone out more.” 

They moved down the hill to the beach road, and as 
they walked Harris talked, talked against time, he 
would have said. They strolled on past the small boys 
fishing, past other low-voiced couples, out into com- 
parative solitude where the farms began. She knew 
what was coming, but she could not stop, could not 
then turn back. 

They came at last to a grassy little knoll which 
looked out upon the lake, and there he laughingly spread 
out his handkerchief for her. 

“ Sit here, my liege lady ! ” 

It was red clover, and its powerful fragrance swept 
upon her with a vision of the hay-field at home. 

Harris lay down below her so that he could see her 
face, and the look in his eyes made her shiver again. 
Nothing so beautiful and powerful and pagan-free had 
come to her since that day when she danced with Carl 
beneath the dappling leaves, when woman’s passion first 
stirred within her. The sailing clouds, the clicking in- 
sects, the smell of leaves and flowers all strove on the 


126 Rose of Dutcher's Coolly 

side of the lover. It was immemorial, this scene, this 
impulse. 

“ Well, Rose, this is our last day at school, and what 
I want to know is this, is it the last we shall see of each 
other ? ” 

She made an effort and answered : 

“ Why, no, I hope not.” 

“You hope not — then there is hope for me ? Con- 
found it. Rose, Tm not going to talk in riddles. You're 
the only girl in the world for me.” He took her hand. 
“And I can't live without you. You are going to live 
with me, aren't you. Rose ? ” 

She shook her head, but tears dropped upon his hand. 
He allured her like the sunshine, this eager young lover. 

His keen eyes perceived a lack of decision in this 
head shake. He held her hand and his fingers caressed 
her wrist. Unconsciously, with pure intent, he used 
all the wiles of men, which women love, yet dread. 
'His voice grew vibrant, yet remained low, his eyes 
spake in subtler language than his tongue. His wrist 
touched her knee, his hair moved in the soft wind. 

“ I can't bear to go home without you. Rose, darling. 
Come, tell me, don't you care for me at all, not the 
least bit ? ” 

She tried to draw her hand away, but he held it and 
continued : 

“I've got everything all planned. I'm going into 
law with my father. I've got plans for a house, and 
we'll begin life together to-day ” 

His physical charm united itself some way with the 


127 


The Gates Open Wide 

smell of clover, the movement of the wind and the 
warm flood of sunshine. She had never loved him, 
though she had always liked him, but now something 
sweet and powerful, something deep buried, rose in her 
heart and shortened her breath. Her face burned, her 
throat was swollen shut, her face was distorted, for one 
moment she was mastered. 

Then the swift revulsion came, and she drew her 
hand away and sprang up. 

“ No ! ” she cried, harshly and bitterly, “ I can’t do 
it ; it is impossible. Go away ! ” 

Then the blood slowly fell away from her neck and 
face, and her heart ceased to pound, her eyes cleared 
and she grew gentle again, seeing his pained and 
frightened face. 

‘‘ I didn’t mean that — I didn’t mean to be so rough, 
Tom, but it’s no use. I don’t want to marry you, nor 
anybody else. All I want is to be let alone. I’m 
going to Chicago. I want to see the world. I can’t 
be shut up in a little town like Lodi. I want to see 
people — thousands of people. I want to see what the 
world is like. I may go to Europe before I get done 
with it. I’m going to study art. I’m going to be great. 
I can’t marry anyone now.” 

She poured out her confidences in swift, almost 
furious protest. She had never confided to him so 
much before. 

His pain was not so overpowering but he found 
strength to say: 

“ I thought you were going to be a writer.” 


128 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


She flushed again. “Well, I am. But Pm going to 
be a painter, too. Pm going home,’’ she said, abruptly, 
and in such wise they walked along the returning way. 

The glamour was gone from the young man’s hair 
and eyes. She saw him as he was, light, boyish, shal- 
low. His physical charm was lost, and a sort of dis- 
gust of his supple waist and rounded limbs came upon 
her, and disgust at herself for that one moment of yield- 
ing weakness; and also the keen fear of having been 
unjust, of having given him a claim which she was re- 
pudiating, troubled her. 

He made one last attempt. 

“ Rose, I wish you’d reconsider. What can you do 
in the world ? ” 

“I don’t know. I can be my own master for one 
thing,” she replied. “ I can see the world for another 
thing — and besides, I don’t want to marry anyone just 
yet.” Her voice was abrupt, merciless, and the young 
fellow bowed his head to his sentence. She was too 
mysterious and powerful for him to understand. 

“ What could I do in Lodi ? Gossip with old women 
and grow old. I know those towns. I had rather live 
in the country than in one of those flat little towns.” 

“ But Pll go to the city with you if you want me 
to. I can get a place there. I know two men ” 

“ No, no ! I can’t do it. I want to be free. Pve 
got something to do, and — I don’t care for you ” 

“Well, go to the ball with me to-night, won’t you ? ” 
he pleaded. 

“Yes, if you never speak about this to me again,” 


The Gates Open Wide 129 

He promised ; of course he promised. Standing 
where he did he would have promised anything. 

It was a singular and lovely ball. The people came 
together simply and quietly, on foot, or on the tinkling 
mule-car. 

There were no ultra-fashionable dresses, and very 
little jewelry. The men came in various cuts of even- 
ing coats, and the girls wore simple white or blue or 
mauve dresses, beneath which their supple untrammelled 
waists, and firm rounded limbs moved with splendid 
grace. 

It was plain they were not all practised dancers. 
Some of the young men danced with hands waggling 
at the wrist, and the girls did not know all the changes, 
but laughter was hearty and without stint. 

Around the walls sat or stood the parents of the dan- 
cers, dignified business men and their wives, keen-eyed 
farmers and village merchants and lawyers. There were 
also the alumni from all over the West, returned to take 
part in the exercises, to catch a glimpse of the dear old 
campus. It was all a renewal of youth to them. 
Many came from the prairies. Some came from the 
bleak mountain towns, and the gleam of the lakes, the 
smell of grass, the dapple of sunlight on the hillside 
affected them almost to tears. Now they danced with 
their wives and were without thought or care of busi- 
ness. 

Professors waltzed with their pupils, and husbands 
with their wives. Lovely, slim young girls dragged their 

K 


130 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

bearded old fathers out into the middle of the floor, 
amid much laughter, and the orchestra played “ Money- 
Musk ” and “ Old Zip Coon ” and “ The Fireman’s 
Dance ” for their benefit. 

Then the old fellows warmed up to it, and danced 
right manfully, so that the young people applauded with 
swift clapping of their hands. Plump mothers took 
part in the quaint old-fashioned figures, and swung and 
balanced and ‘‘ sashayed ” in a gale of fun. 

It was a beautiful coming together of the university. 
It represented the unspoiled neighborliness and sex cama~ 
raderie of the West. Its refinement was not finicky, 
its dignity was not frigidity, and its fun was frank and 
hearty. May the inexorable march of wealth and fash- 
ion pass by afar off, and leave us some little of these 
dear old forms of social life. 

It had a tender and pensive quality, also. The old were 
re-living the past, and all expressed an unconscious feel- 
ing of the transitoriness of these tender and careless hours. 
Smiles flashed forth on the faces of the girls like hidden 
roses disclosed in deep hedges by a passing wind-gust, 
to disappear again in pensive, thoughtful deeps. 

Rose danced with Dr. Thatcher, who took occasion 
to say: 

“Well, Rose, you leave us soon.” 

“Yes, to-morrow. Doctor.” 

“ What are your plans ? ” 

“ I don’t know ; I shall go home this summer, but I 
want to- go to Chicago next winter.” 

“ Aha, you go from world to world. Rose, you will 


The Gates Open Wide 13 1 

do whatever you dream of — provided you don’t marry.” 
He said this as lightly as he could, but she knew he 
meant it. 

“ There isn’t much danger of that,” she said, trying 
to laugh. 

“Well, no, perhaps not.” They fell into a walk, 
and moved slowly away, just outside the throng of 
dancers. 

“ Now, mark you, I don’t advise you at all. I have 
realized from the first a fatality in you. No one can 
advise you. You must test all things for yourself. 
You are alone; advice cannot reach you nor influence 
you except as it appeals to your own reason. To most 
women marriage is the end of ambition; to you it may 
be an incentive. If you are big enough, you will suc- 
ceed in spite of being wife and mother. I believe in 
you. Can’t you come and see me to-morrow ? I want 
to give you letters to some Chicago people.” 

The company began to disperse, and the sadness im- 
pending fell upon them all. One by one good-bys 
were said, and the dancers one and all slipped silently 
away into the night. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE woman’s part 

It was all over at last, the good-bys, the tearful em- 
braces, the cheery waving of hands, and Rose was off 
for home. There were other students on the train, but 
they were freshmen whom she did not know. At the 
moment it seemed as if she were leaving all that was 
worth while — five years of the most beautiful time of 
her life lay behind her. 

She had gone there a country girl, scared and awk- 
ward. She was now a woman (it seemed to her) and 
the time for action of some sort had come. She did 
not look to marriage as a safe harbor. Neither had she 
regarded it as an end of all individual effort, as many of 
her companions unequivocally had done. 

After her experiences during those last three days, she 
had moods when sex seemed an abomination, and she 
wished for freedom from courtship. She already had a 
premonition that she was of those who are destined to 
know much persecution of men. 

Her strong, forceful, full-blooded, magnetic beauty 
could not be hidden so deep under sober garments but 
that the ever-seeking male eye quickly discovered it. 


The Woman's Part 


133 


As she entered the car she felt its penetrating, remorse- 
less glare, and her face darkened, though she was no longer 
exposed to the open insults of brakemen and drummers. 
There was something in the droop of her eyelids and in 
the curve of her mouth which kept all men at a distance, 
even the most depraved. She was not a victim — a girl to 
be preyed upon. She was quite evidently a proud, strong 
woman, to be sued for by all flatteries and attentions. 

The train whirled along over the familiar route, and 
the land was most beautiful. Fresh grass everywhere, 
seas of green flashing foliage, alternating with smooth 
slopes of meadow whereon cattle fed, yet she saw little 
of it. With sombre eyes turned to the pane she thought 
and thought. 

What was to be done now ? That was the question. 
For a year she had been secretly writing verse and 
sending it to the magazines — only to have it all 
returned to her. It made her flush with humiliation 
to think that they came back to her with scarcely a civil 
word of encouragement. Evidently she was wrong. 
She was not intended for a writer after all. She 
thought of the stage, but she did not know how to 
get upon the stage. 

The train drew steadily forward, and familiar lines of 
hill-tops aroused her, and as she turned her face toward 
home, the bent and grizzled figure of her father came 
to her mind as another determining cause. He de- 
manded something of her now after nearly five years’ 
absence from home, for he had paid her way — made it 
possible for her to be what she was. 


134 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


There he sat holding his rearing horses and watching, 
waiting for her. She had a sudden, swift realization of 
his being a type as he sat there, and it made her throat 
fill, for it seemed to put him so far away, seemed to 
take away something of his sweet dignified personality. 

There was a crowd of people on the platform. Some 
of them she knew, some of them she did not. She 
looked very fine and ladylike to John Butcher as she 
came down the car-steps, the brakeman assisting her, 
with elaborate and very respectful courtesy. 

The horses pranced about, so that John could not 
even take her hand, and so she climbed into the buggy 
alone. 

“ Carl will take care of your trunk,” he said. 
“ Give him the check.” 

She turned to Carl, whom she had not observed. 
He bowed awkwardly. 

“ How de do, Rosie,” he said, as he took the check. 
He wore brown denims, and a broad hat, and looked 
strong and clumsy. 

She had no time to talk with him, for the restive 
horses whirled away up the street. The air was heavy 
with the scent of clover, and the bitter-sweet, pungent 
smells of Lombardy poplar-trees. 

They rode in silence till the village lay behind them 
and the horses calmed down. 

“ Cap’s a perfect fool about the cars,” said John. 
“ But I had to take him j Jennie’s getting too heavy, 
I darsent take her.” 

“ How is the stock ? ” ^ 


The Woman’s Part 


135 


“ Oh, all right. We had a big crop of lambs this 
spring. The bees are doing well, but the clover don’t 
seem to attract ’em this year. The corn looks well, 
except down near the creek — it’s always been wet 
there in rainy seasons, you remember.” He gave other 
reports concerning stock. 

Rose felt for the first time the unusualness of this 
talk. All her life she had discussed such things with 
him, but on previous vacations she had not been con- 
scious of its startling plainness, but it came to her now 
with a sudden hot flush, that such talk being reported of 
her to the Doctor and Mrs. Thatcher would shock 
them. 

There was something strange in her father’s manner, 
an excitement very badly concealed, which puzzled her. 
He drove with almost reckless swiftness up the winding 
coolly road. He called her attention to the wayside 
crops and succeeded in making her ask : 

“ Father, what in the world is the matter with you ? 
I never knew you to act like this.” 

John laughed. “ I’m a little upset, getting you home 
again, that’s all.” 

She caught a gleam of new shingles through the 
trees. 

“ What have you been building ? ” 

“Oh, nothing much — new granary — patchin’ up 
a little,” he replied, evasively. When they whirled 
into the yard she was bewildered — the old cottage was 
gone and a new house stood in its place ; a big white 
structure, still littered about with lumber. 


136 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


John broke into a laugh. 

“ How’s that for a new granary ? ” 

“ Oh, father, did you do that for me ? ” 

“ For you and me together, Rosie.” 

They sat in the carriage and looked at it. Rose 
peered through tear-blurred lids. He loved her so — 
this bent old father ! He had torn down the old home 
and built this for her. 

Her aunt came out on the side porch. “ Hello, 
Rosie, just in time ! The shortcake is about ready. 
Ain’t you cornin’ in ? ” 

John gave the team up to the hired hand (who stared 
at Rose with wondering eyes) and then they walked 
upon the front porch and in at the front door. It was 
new — so new it glistened everywhere and was full of 
the fragrance of new lumber and the odor of paint. 

“ I didn’t get any new furniture,” John said. “ I 
thought I’d let you do that.” 

Rose turned and put her arms about his neck. 

“You dear old daddy, what can I do for you, you’re 
so good to me ? ” 

“ There now, don’t mind. I’m paid for it right now. 
I just want you to enjoy it, that’s all, and if any feller 
comes around and you like him, why you can bring him 
right here. It’s big enough and I’m ready to let the 
farm any time.” 

Rose understood his purpose to the uttermost line. 
He' had built this to keep her at home. How little he 
comprehended her, to think that she could marry and 
bring her husband home to this place ! 


The Woman’s Part 


137 

She kissed him and then they peered into all the 
rooms. 

“ Come here — I’ve got something to show you,” 
he said, mysteriously. ‘‘ I just determined to have it, no 
matter what it cost.” He pushed open a door at the 
head of the stairway, calling, triumphantly : 

“ There — how’s that — a bath-room ! ” 

For an instant she felt like laughing. Then she 
looked at his kind and simple face and broke down 
again and cried. 

John understood now that this was only her way of 
being glad, so he just patted her shoulder, and got her 
a chair, and waited for her to dry her eyes. 

“Yes, sir,” he went on, “cost me a hundred dollars 
to put that in, say nothin’ of the fixin’s. I had to have 
special set of eave-spouts made to run the water into a 
cistern on top of the kitchen. I thought of bringing 
the water from the spring, but that’s a little hard.” 

They went down to supper at last, he full of talk, she 
very quiet. His loquacity was painful to her, for it 
seemed to indicate growing age and loneliness. 

The meagreness of the furniture and tableware never 
struck her so forcibly as now, lost in the big new house. 
Intellectual poverty was shown also in the absence of 
books and newspapers, for John Dutcher read little, 
even of political newspapers, and magazines were quite 
outside his experimental knowledge till Rose began to 
bring a few home with her in her later vacations. 

There were no elegancies at their table — that too 
was borne in upon her along with the other disturbing 


138 Rose of Dutcher^s Coolly 

things. It was as if her eyes had suddenly been opened 
to all the intolerable meagreness of her old-time life. 

“ I didn’t buy any carpets or wall-paper, Rosie ; I 
thought you’d like to do that yourself,” John explained, 
as she looked around the bare room. 

But outside all was beautiful, very beautiful. Under 
the trees the sinking sun could be seen hanging just 
above the purple-green hills to the northwest. Robins 
clucked, orioles whistled, a ring-dove uttered its never- 
changing, sorrowful, sweet love-note. A thrush, high 
on a poplar, sang to the setting sun a wonderful hymn, 
and the vividly green valley, with its white houses and 
red barns, was flooded with orange light, heaped and 
brimming full of radiance and fragrance. 

And yet of what avail the beauty of sky and grain to 
a girl without love, to a brain which craved activity, not 
repose ? Vain were sunset sky, flaming green slopes and 
rows of purple hills to eyes which dreamed of cities and 
the movement of masses of men. She was young, not 
old ; ambitious, not vegetative. She was seeking, seek- 
ing, and to wait was not her will or wish. 

The old man perceived no difliculties in the way. 
Rose was educated at last. He had patiently sent her 
to school and now it was over; she was to be his daily 
pride and comfort as of olden time. Without knowing 
it he had forged the chains round her with great skill. 
Every carpet she bought would bind her to stay. She 
was to select the wall-paper, and by so doing, proclaim 
her intention to conform and to content herself in the 
new home. 


The Woman's Part 


139 


She rose the next morning feeling, in spite of all dis- 
turbing thought, the wonderful peace and beauty of the 
coolly, while her heart responded to the birds, rioting 
in song as never before — orioles, thrushes, bobolinks, 
robins, larks — their voices wonderful and brilliant as 
the sunlight which streamed in upon her new, un- 
carpeted floor. 

As she looked around at the large, fine new room, she 
thought of the slant-roofed little attic in which she had 
slept so many years. Yes, decidedly there would be 
pleasure in furnishing the house, in making her room 
pretty with delicate drapery and cheerful furniture. 

She began to plan, only to break olF — it seemed in 
some way to be deceit. No, before she did anything to 
it she must tell him she could not stay here, and she 
went down to breakfast with that resolution tightly 
clutched in her teeth, but when she saw his dear old 
smiling face she could not speak the word. He was so 
pathetically happy. She had never seen him so demon- 
strative, and this mood showed her how deeply he had 
missed her. 

Now that she was home for good, there was no need 
of concealing his exceeding great joy of her daily pres- 
ence with him. She remembered all the brave words 
he had spoken to her in order to make her feel he did 
not suffer when she was happy at school. Fortunately 
at breakfast he was full of another subject. 

“ I s’pose you heard that Carl is to be married ? he 
announced rather than asked her. 

She looked up quickly — ‘‘ No, is he? To whom ? ’’ 


140 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

“ Little Sary Wilson.” 

“Well, Pm very glad to hear it,” she said, quietly. 

Some way, at that moment she seemed more alien to 
him than ever before, and he looked across at her in 
wonder. How ladylike she was in her tasty dress. 
How white her hands were ! And it was wonderful to 
think she could sit so quietly and hear of Carl’s approach- 
ing marriage. He remembered the time when he called 
them to his knee, the two young rogues. She was 
thinking of that too. It was far in the past, yet, far as 
it was, it was still measurable, and a faint flush crept 
over her face. 

The first day she spent in looking about the farm with 
John. Toward evening she climbed the hills alone, and 
spent an hour on the familiar slope. It helped her to 
look down on her plans and her daily life, and the next 
day she met the question direct. 

“Well, Rosie, when will you go to Tyre and do our 
buyin’ ? ” 

“ Oh, not yet. I want to look around a few days 
first.” 

“All right — you’re the captain ! Only we can’t have 
any company till we get some furniture.” 

True enough ! there was the excuse for buying the 
furniture ; even if she were to go to the city she would 
be home during the summer, and it was necessary to 
entertain her friends. The fever seized her thereupon, 
and she plunged into planning and cataloguing. They 
had but little to spend, and she was put to her wit’s end 
to passably furnish the house. 


The Woman’s Part 


141 

This work filled in the first week or two of her stay, 
and she suffered less from loneliness than she had antici- 
pated; it came only at intervals, just before going to 
sleep, or in the morning, as she made her toilet for each 
new but almost eventless day. 

As the home came to look pretty and complete, she 
thought of asking Josie to come on to visit her, and 
finally wrote her, and when she had promised to come, 
there was something to look forward to. 

Meanwhile, she found something interposing between 
herself and her old friends. She meant to be just the 
same as ever, and at first she seemed to succeed, but 
soon found herself not listening to them, or looking at 
them with alien musing eyes. She heard their harsh, 
loud voices, not their words, and she saw their stiff, un- 
graceful gestures instead of the fancy-work and worked- 
over dresses which they were showing her. At such 
times they looked at each other with significant nods. 
Other young people had gone away to school without 
acquiring airs, why should she ? 

It was not her knowledge of books, but of manners, 
which made her alien. She was educated above them, 
too. Her thoughts were higher than theirs, and she 
could not play the hypocrite. She was not interested 
in them; for the most part they bored her and in a few 
cases the misunderstanding grew into anger and distrust. 

Carl drove over once with his bride-elect, and they 
all sat stiffly in the front room for one distressing hour; 
then they left, never to come again. 

Sarah counted the visit not all in vain, however, for 


142 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 


she quite closely reproduced Rose’s shirt-waist the fol- 
lowing week — that much she got out of the call. Carl 
was awed and troubled a little by the failure of his bride 
to get on with Rose, and Rose was bitter over it in heart. 
She could not see the fun of all this, as so many story- 
writers had done. It was all pitiful and bitter and bar- 
ren, and to eat with the knife and drink coffee with a 
loud, sipping sound were inexcusable misdemeanors to 
her then overwrought temper. 

Josie came in like a joyous bird. She fluffed down 
off the train like a bunch of lilac bloom one July day. 

“ Oh, what a funny little town,” she said, after kissing 
Rose how-de-do. “ Are we to ride in a carriage ? Oh, 
I’m so disappointed ! ” 

“ Why so ? ” 

“ Oh, I wanted to ride on a hay-cart or dray or what- 
ever it is. Mr. Butcher, I’m so glad to see you.” She 
sprang upon John and kissed him, “ like a swaller lightin’ 
on me,” he said afterward. It astonished, but gratified 
him. 

“Do you live far out in the country — the real coun- 
try ? ” she asked. 

“Well, you’d think so if you had to haul corn over 
it in the spring,” he replied. 

“ I’d like to haul corn over it,” she replied. “ May 
I?” 

“ You can do anything you want to,” John said. 

Josie got at the picturesque qualities of the people. 
They all interested her and amused her like the cattle 
without horns, and the guinea-hens which clacked like 


The Woman’s Part 


143 


clocks, and the tadpoles in the marsh. She had no per- 
sonal relations — no responsibilities toward them such as 
Rose felt were inescapably hers. Josie had no responsi- 
bilities at all, none under heaven ! 

She laughed at the ill-made dresses, and winked over 
the heads of the old wives when they talked in dialect, 
and made fun of the boys who came courting her, and 
she sang ‘‘ Where did they Get those Hats ? ” after 
coming out of the church. 

Rose laughed and yet suffered, as one might whose 
blood relatives were ridiculed. It was a new experience 
to John Dutcher to have one about who cried out at 
every familiar thing as if it were the seventh wonder. 
The summer visitor had never before penetrated to his 
farm, and all the women he had ever known could talk 
about cattle and drainage and wool-washing almost like 
men. In his interest and desire to do the part of enter- 
tainer, he pushed on into subjects which the girl listened 
to with wonder-wide eyes and a flushed face. 

He talked to her as he would to Rose, about “ farrer 
cows ” and other commonplaces of stock-raising, to 
which Rose would have listened abstractedly or with a 
slight feeling of disgust. To Josie it was deeply fasci- 
nating, and just a little bit like reading a forbidden book. 
It affected her a little unwholesomely, just as it would 
have made Ed, the hand, spasmodically guffaw to stand 
before the Venus de Milo — use and custom do much. 

She sometimes asked questions which she would not 
have dared ask to her uncle, for John Dutcher was be- 
yond sex; indeed, he had always been a man of pure 


144 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

heart and plain speech. Even in his youth he had been 
perfectly free from any sensuality, and now in his later 
middle life sex was a fact, like the color of a horse or a 
squash, and all that pertained to it he talked of, on the 
same plane. It did not occur to him that he was going 
beyond the lines of propriety in explaining to this deli- 
cate little woman various vital facts of stock-raising. 

Josie sometimes went back to Rose smilingly, and 
told her what had taken place. 

“ Why didn’t you ask me — you little goose ? I 
never thought you didn’t know those things. We farm 
girls know all that when we are toddlers. We can’t 
help it.” 

All this should have been tonic, thoroughly wholesome 
to the dainty, over-bred girl, and so it ultimately be- 
came, though it disturbed her at the time. 

The two girls went out into the meadows and upon 
the hills almost daily. They sought wild strawberries 
in the sunny spots amid the hazel brush. They buried 
themselves in the hay in the field and climbed on the 
huge loads with John and rode to the barn. They 
drank water out of the spring, lying flat on the ground ; 
Rose showed how it was done. They went up on the hill- 
sides under the edges of great ledges of water-washed 
sandstone, where Rose had made her playhouse in her 
childhood, and she drew forth from the crevices in the 
rocks the queer little worn pieces of rock which she had 
once called horses and cows and soldiers. 

Rose had not been so girlish since her first vacation 
from school in Madison. She romped and laughed with 


The Woman’s Part 


H5 

the ever-joyous Josie, and together they grew brown and 
strong. But there came into the lusty, splendid joy of 
these days hours of almost sorrowful silence and dream- 
ing. It all ended in nothing, this attempt at amusement. 

Here in the riant and overflowing opulence of July, 
time without love’s companionship was time wasted. 
Of what avail these soft winds, the song of birds, the 
gleam and lift and shimmer of leaves, if love were not 
there to share it ? 

Josie frankly confessed the name of the one she 
wished to share it with, but Rose looked into the sky 
and remained silent. Her soul was still seeking, rest- 
less, avid, yet evermore discerning, evermore difficult to 
satisfy. 

They fell into long talks on marriage, and Rose con- 
fided to her some of her deepest thoughts, though she 
well knew how incapable this little twittering sparrow 
was of understanding her. 

“ I want to know the men who think the great 
thoughts of the world,” she said once as they lay under 
the beeches on the hillside, far above the haying field. 
“ I don’t want to marry — I only want to know men 
who can lift me up by their great plans. I want to for- 
get myself in work of some kind — I don’t know what 
kind — any kind that will make me big and grand in 
my life. I can’t stand these little petty things here in 
this valley ; these women drive me crazy with their 
talk of butter and eggs and made-over bonnets.” 

“ I think they’re funny,” said Josie. “ They talk so 
loud, and they get so interested in such queer things.” 


146 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

Rose fell silent again for Josie was of equally petty 
type, only her aft'airs happened to be of a different sort, 
not larger, only different, a chatter of dress and teas. 

“ Oh, for a nice man !” sighed Josie. “ Why didn’t 
you tell me there weren’t any nice men up here ? ” 

Meanwhile the lack of men was not apparent. 
Hardly a day but some young fellow from Tyre or the 
Siding made bold to hitch his horses to the fence before 
Butcher’s place. Rose was annoyed and gave most of 
them scant courtesy. Josie, however, always saw them 
and managed to have great amusement out of their em- 
barrassment. 

Like summer girls in general she thought any man 
better than no man at all. Rose, however, could not 
endure a love-glance from any of them. She found her 
household duties pressing when they called, and Josie 
entertained them, and afterward entertained Rose by 
mimicking their looks and tones. It was very funny 
to see her screw her little face into quaint grimaces to 
represent her suitors’ bashful grins and side-glances. 

They were not always bashful, it must be said. 
Sometimes they were distressingly bold, and they came 
to the point of offensive warfare with a readiness and 
assurance which scared the little coquette. She had 
never seen anything like it. 

Rose found Josie entertaining in any mood. 


CHAPTER XIV 


AGAIN THE QUESTION OF HOME-LEAVING 

But the day came at last when Josie must say good- 
by, and then Rose’s essential loneliness swept back upon 
her in a bitter flood. That night she walked her room 
in her naked feet, with her handkerchief stifling her 
sobs, so that John might not hear. She fought it out 
there (she supposed) and ended at last by determining to 
sacrifice herself to her father. 

He could not be deserted, he needed her so, now that 
he was growing old and a little weaker. She must put 
away her vague, ambitious dreams of work in the great 
world and apply herself to making him happy. 

And yet to what end was all her study, she thought, 
during these later years ? Could it be applied to doing 
him good ? Her indifferent talent as a musician seemed 
the only talent which gave him joy. He cared nothing 
— knew nothing of the things she loved and thought 
about ! 

Was her life, like his, to come down to the raising of 
cattle and the breeding of sheep Was not his office 
served in educating her Should not the old be sacri* 
ficed to the young 


147 


148 Rose of Butcher s Coolly 

All these devilish questions came into her mind like 
flashes of lurid light, but they all paled and faded before 
this one unchangeable radiance : he was her father, 
tender, loving, simple, laborious, and old. 

She fell asleep after hours of writhing agony, worn 
out, yet triumphant — she imagined. 

But she was not. Day followed day, each one 
seemingly more hopeless than the other. This consid- 
eration beat like a knell into her brain, love could 
never come to her. Marriage with these young men 
was no longer possible. Love was out there, some- 
where in the great world, in the city, among artists and 
music-lovers, and men of great thought and great deeds. 
Her powerful physical, mental, and emotional woman- 
hood rebelled at this thought of lovelessness ; like the 
prisoner of old, bound in a sunless cavern where the 
drip-drop of icy water fell upon his brain, she writhed 
and seemed like to go mad. 

This was the age of cities. The world’s thought 
went on in the great cities. The life in these valleys 
was mere stagnant water, the great stream of life swept 
by far out and down there, where men and women met 
in millions. To live here was to be a cow, a tadpole ! 
Grass grew here, yes — but she could not live on grass. 
The birds sang here, yes — but there were Patti and 
Duse and Bernhardt out there in the world. 

Here you could arise at five o’clock to cook break- 
fast and wash dishes, and get dinner, and sweep and 
mend, and get supper, and so on and on till you rotted, 
like a post stuck in the mud. Her soul would wither 


Again the Question of Home- Leaving 149 

in such a life. She was already slipping back into 
shiftlessness, into minute untidiness — into actual slov- 
enliness. There was no stimulus in these surroundings, 
she told herself ; everything was against her higher self. 

Once she had read a sentence from Lowell which 
flamed upon her mind now each time she mused upon 
her lot. 

“ The wilderness is all right for a vacation, but all 
wrong for a lifetime.” 

She considered the coolly a wilderness. It had noth- 
ing for her but nature, and nature palls upon a girl of 
twenty, with red blood in her veins, and splendid dreams 
in her heart. 

Out there was her ideal. “ Out there is the man 
who is to fill out my life,” she uttered to herself, softly, 
so that only her inner ear heard. 

So she argued, fought, wept, surrendered, and went to 
battle again. While all about her, John and his sister 
moved tranquilly to their daily duties, calm as the cattle 
in the meadows. To the discerning eye it was a sug- 
gestive picture, this dark, gloomy, restless girl seated 
opposite those serene, almost stolid faces, to whom 
“the world ” was a breeze blowing in the tree-tops. She 
had the bearing of a rebellious royal captive — a duchess 
in exile. Mrs. Diehl and the hired man were the 
peasants who waited upon her, but ate with her — and 
her father was the secure freeholder, to whom kings 
were obscure, world-distant diseases. 

Then the equinoctial storms came on, and days 
of dull, cold, unremitting rain confined her to the house. 


150 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

The birds fell silent, the landscape, blurred with gray 
mist, looked grim and threatening, and there was proph- 
ecy of winter in the air. The season seemed to have 
rushed into darkness, cold, and decay, in one enormous 
bound. The hills no longer lifted buoyant crests to 
heaven ; they grew cheerless and dank as prison walls. 

One night Rose spoke. She had always been chary 
of caresses ; even when a child she sat erect upon her 
father’s knee, with a sober little face, and when she 
grew sleepy she seldom put her hands to his neck, but 
merely laid her head on his breast and went to sleep. 
John understood her in all this, but was he not of the 
same feeling ? Love that babbled spent itself ; his had 
no expression. 

His heart was big with pride and affection when his 
splendid girl came over and put her arms about his 
neck, and put her forehead down on his shoulder. 

“O pappa John, you’re so good to me — I’m ashamed 

— I don’t deserve this new house ! ” 

“ Oh, yes y’ do, daughter.” His voice when he said 
“ daughter ” always made her cry, it was deep and ten- 
der like the music of water. It stood for him in the 
place of “dear” and “darling,” and he very, very sel- 
dom spoke it. All this made it harder for her to go on. 

“No, I don’t, father — Oh, father, I can’t stay here 

— I can’t bear to stay here now ! ” 

“Why not, Rosie ? ” 

“Oh, because it’s so lonesome for me. There is no- 
body for me to talk to ” (she had to use phrases he could 
understand), “ and I want to go on with my studies.” 


Again the Question of Home- Leaving 151 


John considered a moment. 

“ But, Rosie, seems to me you’ve got enough ; you’re 
graduated.” 

Rose saw the hopelessness of making him understand 
that, so she went back. 

“ It’s so lonesome for me here, pappa John ! ” 

He considered again. ‘‘I s’pose it is. Well, you can 
go to the Siding every day if you want to. Hitch up old 
Doll every day ” 

“ 1 don’t care for the Siding ; it’s just as lonesome 
there for me. I want to go to Chicago.” 

John grew rigid. “ Chicago ! What you want to do 
there ? ” 

“ I want to study, pappa. I want to go on with my 
work. I’ll come home summers just the same. I’ll 
come home Christmas if you want me to. It won’t 
cost much. I’ll live just as cheap as I can ” 

“’Tain’t that, ’tain’t that. Rose,” he said. Then he 
lifted his head and looked around. 

She read his thought, and the tears came to her eyes 
in blinding rush. 

“ I know, pappa. It’s terrible to go now, when you’ve 
built this nice home for me, but what can I do ? It’s 
so lonesome here ! I thought maybe I’d get used to it, 
but it gets worse. I can’t stay here this winter. You 
must let me go. I’ll go crazy if I stay here all winter. 
I must go out into the world. I want to be an artist. 
I want to see great people. I can’t stay here, pappa 
John ! ” 

The terrible earnestness of every sentence stabbed 


152 


Rose of Dutcher s Coolly 


John Dutcher’s heart like a poniard thrust. He put 
her away and rose stiffly. 

‘‘ Well, well, Rosie, if you want to go ” 

He did not finish, but turned tremblingly and walked 
out. She remained on the floor near his chair and 
watched him go, her soul sick with wretchedness. 

Why was the world so ordered ? Why must she 
torture that beautiful, simple soul ? Why was it that 
all her high thoughts, her dreams, her ambitions, her 
longings, seemed to carry her farther away from him ? 

She could have beaten her head against the wall in 
her suffering. She rose at last and crawled slowly to 
her room, and abandoned herself to black, rayless hope- 
lessness. 

John Dutcher went out to the hedgerow and sat 
down on a stool. Around him bees were humming in 
the wet clover. The calves thrust their inquiring noses 
through the fence and called to him. The rain-clouds 
were breaking up, and the sun was striking under the 
flying canopy at the v/est. 

It was the bitterest moment of his life, since his 
wife’s death. His eyes were opened to his fate; he 
saw what he had done ; he had educated his daughter 
out of his world. Never, again would she be content in 
the coolly beside him. He saw how foolish he had 
been all these years, to suppose he could educate and 
keep her. For a moment he flamed with resentment 
and said to himself : 

“ I wish she had never seen a book.” 

Then he grew tender. He saw her again in her 


Again the Question of Home- Leaving 153 

little blue apron with its pockets full of wheat — he saw 
her blowing hair, her sunny face; he heard again the 
wind-tossed chatter of her cunning lips. He ran swiftly 
over her development — how tall she grew and how 
splendid she was now, the handsomest girl in the coolly, 
and he softened. She was right. Who was there of 
the neighborhood (or even in Tyre) good enough for 
her ? 

So he rose to a conception which had never come to 
him before, and even now it was formlessly vast; he 
felt the power of the outside world, and reached to a 
divination of the fatality of it all. It had to be, for it 
was a part of progress. He was old and bent and dull. 
She was young, gloriously young. The old must give 
way to the young, while she was the one to be bowed 
down to. She was a queen and he was her subject. 

With these conceptions in his mind he went back and 
looked for her. He called her softly, but she did not 
hear, she was sobbing deep into her pillow. He came 
up the stairs and saw her lying face downward on her 
bed. His heart rose in his throat, because it was a 
terrible thing to see his imperious girl weep. 

“ Rosie, old pappa John surrenders. You’re right 
and he’s an old dummy.” 

She turned her face upon him. 

“ No, you’re right. We won’t be separated.” 

“ But we ain’t goin’ to be.” He came over and sat 
down on the edge of the bed. 

“You’ll come home summers, and maybe I’ll go to 
Chicago winters.” 


154 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

Her face flashed into a smile. She flung her arms 
about him again. 

“ Oh, will you, pappa John ? ” 

“Course I will. Wait till you see me in a spike-tail 
coat and a boiled shirt. I’ll astonish them city dudes.” 

Rose laughed a little wildly, and tightened her clasp 
about his neck. 

“ You’re my dear old pappa John.” 

She went at once to her desk and wrote a letter to 
Mary Compton, an old schoolmate who had gone to 
Chicago, and whose guidance to bed and board now 
seemed invaluable. 

That night John Butcher did not go to sleep at once, 
as he usually did on entering his room. He went to his 
bureau — the old bureau he had bought for his wife 
thirty years before. In it he kept his pictures. There 
were several tintypes of Rose, in awkward, scared poses, 
and there too was the last picture of his wife which had 
been taken with Rose as a babe in her arms. 

Butcher sat for a long time looking at it, and the 
tears ran down his face unheeded, pitiful to see. 

When he got up at last he moved stiffly, as if he had 
suddenly grown ten years older, and in his sleep his sis- 
ter heard him groan and mutter. In the morning he 
said he had a touch of rheumatism, but it would most 
probably pass off as the sun came out. 


CHAPTER XV 


CHICAGO 

Almost 6 o’clock, and the train due in Chicago at 
6.30 ! The city grew more formidable to Rose as she 
approached it. She wondered how it would first appear 
on the plain. There was little sign of it yet. 

As she looked out of the car-window she saw men 
stacking grain, and ploughing. It was supper-time at 
home, and John was just rising from the table. The 
calves were bleating for their pails of milk ; the guinea- 
hens were clacking, and the little turkeys crying in the 
grass, the bees were homing, heavy with honey, and 
here she sat, rushing toward that appalling and un- 
imaginable presence — Chicago. 

Somewhere just ahead it sat, this mighty hive of a 
million and a half of people. The thought of it made 
her heart beat quick, and her throat filled. She was going 
there ; the lake was there ; art was there, and music and 
the drama — and love ! Always under each motion, 
always behind every success, was the understanding that 
love was to be the woman’s reward and recompense. It 
was not articulate nor feverish, this thought ; it was a deep, 
pure emotion, streaming always toward the unknown. 

15s 


156 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

She dreamed as the train rumbled on. She would 
succeed, she must succeed. She gripped the seat-rail 
with her broad, strong hands, and braced herself like 
one entering a flood. 

It was this wonderful thing again, a fresh, young, and 
powerful soul rushing to a great city, a shining atom of 
steel obeying the magnet, a clear rivulet from the hills 
hurrying to the sea. On every train at that same hour, 
from every direction, others, like her, were entering on 
the same search, to the same end. 

“ See that cloud ? ” someone said ; ‘‘ that’s Chicago.” 

Rose looked — far to the southeast a gigantic smoke- 
cloud soared above the low horizon line, in shape like 
an eagle, whose hovering wings extended from south to 
east, trailing mysterious shadows upon the earth. The 
sun lighted its mighty crest with crimson light, and its 
gloom and glow became each moment more sharply 
contrasted. Toward this portentous presence the train 
rushed, uttering an occasional shrill neigh, like a stall- 
ion’s defiance. 

The brazen bell upon the engine began to clang and 
clang; small towns of scattered wooden houses came 
into view and were left behind. Huge, misshapen 
buildings appeared in flat spaces, amid hundreds of 
cars. Webs of railway tracks spread out dangerously in 
acres of marvellous intricacy, amid which men moved, 
sooty, grimy, sullen, and sickly. 

Terrors thickened. Smells assaulted her sensitive 
nostrils, incomprehensible and horrible odors. Every- 
where men delved in dirt and murk and all unloveliness. 


Chicago 


157 


Streets began to stretch away on either side, intermin- 
able, squalid, filled with scowling, squaw-like women 
and elfish children. The darkness grew, making the 
tangle and tumult a deadly struggle. 

Was this the city of her dreams ? This the mag- 
nificent, the home of education and art ? 

The engine’s bell seemed to call back “ Good cheer! 
Good cheer! ” The buildings grew mightier but not less 
gloomy ; the freight-cars grew fewer, and the coaches 
more numerous. It was an illimitable jungle filled with 
unrecognizable forms, over which night was falling. 

A man with a hoop of clinking checks came through. 
He was a handsome, brisk, and manly fellow, and his 
calm, kindly voice helped Rose to choke down her dread. 

‘‘ Baggage checked ! — Baggage, baggage checked to 
any part of the city. Baggage ! ” 

In him she saw the native denizen to whom all these 
horrors were commonplace sensations, and it helped 
her. It couldn’t be so bad as it looked to her. 

“ Chicago, She-caw-go ! ” called the brakeman, and 
her heart for a moment stood still, and a smothering 
sensation came upon her. She was at the gate of the 
city, and life with all its terrors and triumphs seemed 
just before her. 

At that moment the most beautiful thing in the world 
was the smooth pasture by the spring, where the sheep 
were feeding in the fading light, and if she could, she 
would have turned back, but she was afloat, and retreat 
was impossible. She pressed on with the rest, wonder- 
ing what she could do if Mary did not meet her. 


158 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 


Mary had hardly been more than an acquaintance at 
school, but now she seemed a staff to lean upon. Rose 
looked to her as a guide to a refuge, a hiding-place from 
all these terrors. 

Out under the prodigious arching roof she stepped, 
into the tumult of clanging bells, of screeching, hissing 
steam, and of grinding wheels. The shouts of men 
echoed here and there in the vaulted roof, mysteriously 
as in a cavern. Up the long walk, streams of people 
moved, each one laden, like herself, with a valise. 
Electric lamps sputtered overhead. She hurried on, 
with sensitive ears tortured by the appalling clamor, 
her eyes wide and apprehensive. 

Her friend was not to be seen, and she moved on 
mechanically with the rest, keeping step beside an old 
man who seemed to be familiar with the station, and 
who kept off (without knowing it) the attentions of 
two human vultures in wait for such as Rose. 

They moved up the steps into the waiting-room 
before Rose gave up hope of her friend. So far she 
had gone securely, but could she find the house which 
was to be her home, alone ? 

She sat down for an instant on the long seat by 
the wall, and listened to the obscure thunder of the 
street outside. It was terrifying, confusing. Shrill 
screams and hoarse shouts rose above a hissing, scraping 
sound, the clang of gongs and the click of shoe- 
heels. 

Every voice was pitched to an unnatural key, like 
those of men in a mill. The clangor seemed hot, some 


Chicago 


159 


way, like smitten iron and brass. No sound was famil- 
iar to her, nothing cool and reposeful. Her head 
throbbed and her tongue was dry. She had eaten little 
since early morning, and she felt weak. 

She looked far more composed and self-reliant than 
she was, and when her friend came swinging up to her 
she cried out : “ Oh, Mary ! ” and her friend realized a 
little of her relief and gratitude. 

“Oh, here you are! I got delayed — forgive me. 
Tm all out o’ breath.” (Here she kissed her.) “ How 
well you look I Your complexion is magnificent. Give 
me your valise. We’ll send for your trunk. Save 
twenty-five cents by having it done up town. This 
way — I’m glad to see you. How is Wisconsin ? ” 

Mary Compton was tall, red-haired, and strong. Her 
eyes were keen and laughing, and the tilt of her chip hat 
and the swing of her skirts let everybody know how able 
she was to take care of herself — thank you I She had 
been the smart girl of a small town near Madison, and 
had come to the city, precisely as her brother Dan had 
gone to Idaho, for the adventure of it. It was quite 
like hunting bears. 

“ Shall we take the grip ? ” 

Rose didn’t know what she meant, but she said : 

“Just as you like.” 

“ I like to take the grip ; it gives a fellow a little fresh 
air, if there is any at all.” 

A train of cable-cars came nosing along like vicious 
boars, with snouts close to the ground. Mary helped 
Rose upon the open forward car, which had seats facing 


i6o Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

outward. A young man lifted his hat and made room 
for them. 

“ Hello, John ! ” said Mary, “ aren’t you a little early 
to-night Rose, my friend Mr. Hardy. Mr. Hardy, 
Miss Butcher.” 

The young fellow raised his hat again and bowed. 
He was a pleasant-faced young man in round straw hat 
and short coat. Mary paid no further attention to him. 

“ I’ve got you a room right next to mine,” she said 
to Rose, who was holding to the seat with one hand and 
clinging to her hat with the other. The car stopped and 
started with vicious suddenness. 

“ You’d better hang on ; the gripman is mad to-night,” 
Mary explained. “ We’re most to our street, anyway.” 

To Rose it was all a wild ride. The noise, the leap- 
ing motion of the cars and the perilous passage of drays 
made it as pleasant to her as a ride behind a running 
team on a “ corduroy road.” 

They came at last to quieter spaces, and alighted 
finally at a cross street. 

“ I’m pretty far up,” said Mary, “ but I want it de- 
cently quiet where I live. I have noise enough at the 
office.” 

Rose thought it indecently noisy. Peddlers were ut- 
tering strange singsong cries ; children romped, scream- 
ing in high-pitched furious treble j laundry wagons and 
vegetable wagons clattered about. There was a curious 
pungent odor in the air. 

On the steps of the houses groups of young people, 
like Mary and John, sat on strips of carpet, and laughed 


Chicago i5i 

and commented on the passers-by. Mary turned upon 
one fool who called a smart word at her : 

“ Left your manners in Squashville, didn’t you, little 
man ? ” 

They came at last to an imposing block of houses, 
situated at the corner. They entered the door and 
climbed a gas-lit stairway, which went round and round 
a sort of square well. They came at last to a door 
which closed all passage, and Mary got out her key and 
opened it. 

“ Here we are ! ” she said cheerily. 

The main hall was carpeted and ran past several 
doors, which were open. In one room a young man in 
his shirt-sleeves was shaving before a glass. In another 
a girl was reading. 

“ Hello ! ” called Mary. 

“ Hello ! ” said the girl, without looking up. 

“ Here’s my room, and this’s yours.” Mary pushed 
open a door at the end of the hall. It was a small 
room, papered in light buft' and blue. It had an oak 
dresser and mirror, a couple of chairs, and a mantle-bed. 
It looked cheerful and clean, but very small. Mary put 
down her valise. 

“ I guess you’ll find everything all right, water and 
towels. Wash up right off — dinner’ll be ready soon.” 

Rose removed her hat and sat down, her head throb- 
bing with the heat and noise. She heard the man at the 
glass whistling, and Mary was thumping about in her 
vigorous way. 

The dash of cold water cleared her brain, but did not 


M 


i 62 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

remove her headache. Her face was still flushed and 
her eyes expanded. 

Mary, coming back, looked at her a moment and 
then rushed upon her and hugged her. 

“ Oh, what a beauty you are ! I wish I had half what 
you’ve got.” 

Rose smiled faintly; she cared little at that moment 
whether she looked well or ill. 

‘‘ The boys will all be dead in love with you before 
dinner is over. Let me tell you about them.” She 
softened her reed-like voice down and glanced at the 
transom furtively : “ Never forget the transom when 
you’re talking secrets,” she explained. 

“First, there’s Mr. Taylor; he’s from Colorado 
somewhere. He’s a lawyer. He’s a fine fellow too — 
you’ll like him. Then there’s Mr. Simons; he’s a Jew, 
but he’s not too much of a Jew. There’s Alice Fletcher; 
she’s queer and grumpy, but she reads a lot and she can 
talk when she wants to, and there’s you and myself.” 

“ I don’t feel like meeting them to-night,” Rose said ; 
“ if I had a cup of tea I’d stay in my room.” 

“ All right ! I’ll bring it.” 

The bell rang and then the movement of feet and the 
banging of doors told of the rush to dinner. 

Mary came back with a cup of tea and a biscuit and 
some pudding. 

“ Have more, if you wish,” she said. 

“This will do nicely. You’re very kind, Mary 
Compton. I don’t deserve it.” 

“ You deserve the world,” cried the adoring girl. “ If 


Chicago 1 63 

I had your figure and complexion, Pd make the universe 
wait on me.” 

In spite of all this fervor of praise Rose felt herself 
to be a very dejected and spiritless beauty. She was 
irritated and angry with the nagging of strange sights 
and sounds and smells. The air seemed laden with 
disease and filth. It was all so far from the coolly with 
its purple hills looming against the sapphire sunset sky. 

But this she came for — to see the city ; to plunge 
into its life. She roused herself therefore with a blush 
of shame at her weakness. She had appeared to be a 
child before this girl, who had always been her inferior 
at school. 

It was a very dignified young woman therefore who 
rose to greet Mrs. Wilcox, the landlady, whom Mary 
brought back. This dignity was not needed. Mrs. 
Wilcox was a sweet-voiced, smiling woman of fifty — 
being of those toilers who smile when they are tired 
enough to drop. She was flushed with fatigue and 
moved languidly, but her kind, patient, pathetic smile 
touched Rose almost to tears. 

“ Pm glad to have you come here,” the landlady said. 
“ We’re all nice people here, aren’t we. Miss Compton ? ” 
Her eyes twinkled with humorous self-analysis. 

“Every one of us,” corroborated Mary. 

“ I hope you’ll rest well. If there’s anything we can 
do for you, my dear, let me know.” Such was the 
spirit in which the overworked woman served her 
boarders. They all called her “ mother.” She had no 
children of her own, and her husband was “ not at all 


164 Rose of Butchers Coolly 

well/' yet nothing could sour her sweet kindliness, which 
included all the world. She was a familiar type, and 
Rose loved her at once. 

Miss Fletcher came in and was introduced. She was 
a teacher in a school near by. 

“ What anybody should come to this town for I can't 
understand. I stay here because I'm obliged to. I'm 
just back from the country to my work." 

“The country is all right for a vacation," quoted Rose. 

Mary broke in, “ That's what I say. I lived on a 
farm and I lived in Castle Rock. When I lived on the 
farm I wanted to get to Castle Rock. When I got to 
Castle Rock I wanted to get to Madison. Madison 
made me hone for Chicago, and when I had a chance 
to come, I just dropped my work at the university and 
put for the city, and here I am and glad of it." 

“ I can't understand such folly," murmured Miss 
Fletcher. 

“You could if you'd stayed on the farm the year 
round, with nobody to talk to and mighty little to read. 
It's all right for you to go up for a couple of months 
and lie about in a hammock, but you take a place like 
Castle Rock all the year round ! It's worse than a 
farm. Gossip ! They talk every rag of news to smith- 
ereens, don’t they. Rose ? ” 

Rose nodded. 

“ And then the people ! They're the cullin's. All 
the bright boys and girls go to Madison and Chicago 
or Dakota, and then the rest marry and intermarry and 
have idiot boys and freckle-faced girls ! " 


Chicago 165 

They all laughed. Mary was, always extreme, no 
matter what her subject of conversation. 

Miss Fletcher sighed resignedly. 

“Well, it’s fate. Here this big city sits and swallows 
you bright people like a great dragon, and the old folks 
are left alone in these dull places you talk about.” 

Rose felt her eyes filling with tears. The figure 
of her lonely old father came before her. She saw 
him sitting beside the kitchen-table, his head on his palm, 
and all the new house empty and dark. 

Mary jumped up. “ Here now, stop that talk, we 
must leave Rose alone and let her go to sleep.” 

They left her alone, but sleep *was impossible. The 
tramp of feet, the sound of pianos, the slam of doors, 
the singing and laughing of the other boarders, made 
sleep impossible. The cars jangled by, the click-clack 
of the horses’ hoofs and the swift rattle of wagons kept 
up long after the house was silent. Between midnight 
and four o’clock she got a little sleep, out of which she 
awoke while a booming, clattering wagon thundered by. 
Other wagons clattered viciously along up the alleys, 
and then some early riser below began to sing, and Rose 
wearily dressed and sat down by the window to listen. 

Far to the south a low, intermittent, yet ever deepen- 
ing, crescendo bass note began to sound. It was Chi- 
cago waking from the three hours’ doze, which is its 
only sleep. It grew to a raucous, hot roar; and then 
to the north she heard the clear musical cry of a fruit 
vender — then another: ^^Blackberries! Fine fresh 
blackberries ! ” 


1 66 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

The cars thickened, the sun grew hot and lay in 
squares of blinding light across her carpet. That curi- 
ous pungent smell came in with the wind. Newsboys 
cried their morning papers. Children fought and played 
in the street. Distant whistles began to sound, and her 
first morning in Chicago came to Rose, hot, brazen, 
unnatural, and fell upon her fiercely, although she was 
already blinded, bruised, discouraged, abased, homesick. 


V 


CHAPTER XVI 


HER FIRST CONQUEST 

She was still sitting by the window wondering what 
to do next, when Mary tapped at her door. 

‘‘ May I come in ? ” 

She looked fresh and strong, and her cheery smile 
made her seem almost beautiful to Rose. 

‘‘ How did you sleep ? ” 

Rose shook her head. Mary laughed. 

“ I can tell by the looks of you. Look’s if you’d 
been pulled through a knot-hole, as they say up in 
Molasses Gap. Heard everything that took place, 
didn’t you ? I did too. You’ll get over that. I sleep 
like a top now.” 

“ What is that smell ? Pah ! ” shuddered Rose. 

Mary elevated her freckled nose. ‘‘ What smell ? 
Oh, you mean that rotten, piney, turpentiney smell — 
that’s the Chicago smell. It comes from the pavin’ 
blocks, I guess. I never inquired. I’ll ask Mr. Reed, 
he knows everything mean about Chicago. Well, you 
hadn’t better go to breakfast looking like that. I want 
you to paralyze that Boston snipe. I’ll bring in your 
breakfast.” 


167 


i68 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


Rose accepted this service passively ; nothing else vi^as 
to be done in Mary Compton’s presence. She had the 
energy of a steam threshing-machine, and affection to 
correspond. 

Rose wondered again what she could do next. She 
was here to study art and literature — there was the 
library ! She would read. And there were lectures 
perhaps ; what she was to do would come to her after 
a while. 

Mary returned a little hot of color, bringing a tray. 

“That Boston clothespin says you’re a myth or 
a country gawk. You must lay him out cold as a 
handspike. I’ve been bragging about you, and they 
were all on tiptoe to see you this morning. You sail 
in on ’em at dinner the way you used to do at our 
chapter-house spreads. Weren’t they great ! There 
now. I’ve got to vamoose. I’m not a lady of leisure. 
I’m a typewriter on trial, and looks won’t carry me 
through. I’ve got to rustle and walk chalk, as they say 
in Molasses Gap. So good-by. Take it easy to-day. 
If you want to walk, go over to the lake front,” and 
she banged out of the door and faced the city in her 
daily encounter. 

Rose ate her breakfast and felt much better. Her 
trunk came, and she got out her dresses and hung them 
up, and made other preparations for staying, although it 
seemed impossible she should ever sleep another night in 
this terrible city. 

She got out her portfolio and wrote a letter home and 
one also to Dr. Thatcher. Then she looked over the 


Her First Conquest 169 

little bunch of letters of introduction she had. One 
was to Dr. Isabel Herrick, one to Professor H. Bevan 
Fowler at Evanston, and one was to Orrin Thatcher; 
that was the doctor’s cousin, a young lawyer in the 
Woman’s building, whatever that was. With these and 
ten dollars a week she faced Chicago. The contest was 
unequal. 

She felt this more keenly as she stood on the lake 
front a little later on in the day. She went there as the 
New Hampshire girl goes to the sea. This body of 
water, majestic in its immense shoreless spread, is 
wonderful to the young girl from Iowa or interior 
Wisconsin. 

A fresh, keen east wind had arisen, pure and exhila- 
rating, and the smooth expanse of glittering green-and- 
blue water stretched out under a vivid blue sky, in which 
great clouds floated like snow mountains, trailing great 
shadows like robes of state upon the lake. 

The curving lake-wall was wet and glistening with the 
up-flung spray. The slender elms were fronded at the 
top like palms, and the vivid green grass set opposite 
the pink-gray wall and the brilliant many-colored lake, 
in magnificent, harmonious contrast. The girl felt her 
soul grow larger as she faced this scene, so strange, so 
Oriental, and she looked and looked, until it became a 
part of her. 

It was all so remote and so splendid. There the 
great violet-shadowed sails of ships stood, as she had 
seen them in pictures of the sea. There a gleaming 
steamer ran, trailing great banners of smoke. There 


170 


Rose of Dutcher^s Coolly 


glittered the white bodies and slant wings of gulls, dip- 
ping, upshooting, and whirling. To her eyes this was 
infinity, and the purple mist in which the ships drave 
was ultimate mystery. 

At last she turned to look behind her. There on the 
left stood rows of immense houses, barred and grated 
like jails or fortresses ; palaces where lived the mighty 
ones of Chicago commerce. Before their doors car- 
riages stood, with attendants in livery, such as she had 
read about and had never seen. Up and down the 
curving ribbon of lavender sand other carriages were 
driving, with jingle of silver chains and soft roll of 
wheels. The horses flung foam from their bits ; they 
were magnificent teams (she knew horses as well as any 
coachman), and their brass-trimmed harnesses glittered 
in the sun like burnished gold. 

There was no noise here beyond the tread of these 
stately animals, the babble of a few soft-voiced children 
on the grass, and the crackling, infrequent splash of the 
leaping breakers. It was a wide contrast to the Chicago 
of her first glimpses the day before. That side of the 
city terrified her, this oppressed and awed her. The 
social splendor of this life appealed to her fresh girlish 
perception as it would not to any man. Her quick im- 
agination peopled these mansions with beautiful women 
and lordly men, and she felt herself rightful claimant of 
a place among them. 

She turned and faced them with set teeth and a 
singular look in her half-closed eyes, and in her heart 
she said : “ Before I die Fll go where I please in this 


Her First Conquest 17 1 

city, ril be counted as good as any of you — poor as 
I am.” 

To the onlooker — ^to Mrs. Oliver Frost, she was a 
girl in a picturesque attitude; to the coachmen on the 
carriages she was a possible nurse-girl ; to the policeman 
she was a speck on the lake-front lawn. 

5|c 5j« jls 

Something of this mood was with her still when she 
went in to dinner with Mary. Mary ushered the way, 
beaming with joy. Rose never looked more beautiful 
nor more imperious. The Boston man was properly 
astonished ; the Jew salesman smiled till his chubby face 
seemed not able to contain his gladness. Mr. Taylor, 
a gaunt young man, alone seemed unmoved ; the morose 
teacher gave a sigh of sad envy. 

Rose said little during the meal. She cordially hated 
Mr. Reed at once. His Boston accent annoyed her, 
and his brutal sarcasm upon the West aroused a new 
anger in her. She had never listened to such talk before. 
It didn’t seem possible anybody could so disparage the 
West. 

“ Civilization stops,” he said during the meal, “ after 
you leave the Hudson River.” 

“ Some folks’ manners stop after they leave the 
Hudson River, if they ever had any,” Mary replied, 
and the Jew cackled joyously. 

He defended Chicago. “ It is the greatest place in 
the world to do business. I’m a New Yorker by birth, 
but Chicago suits me. I like its hustle.” 

“ That’s the point. It thinks of nothing but hustle,” 


172 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 


said the Boston man. “ I was speaking of higheh 
things. It lacks the aht atmospheah of Boston and 
Cambridge.” 

“ It has all the atmosphere I need,” said the Jew. 

To Rose all this was new. It had not occurred to 
her to differentiate the cities sharply from each other. 
Chicago, to her, was a great city, a splendid example of 
enterprise, and it was to be her city, the pride of the 
West. To the country mind a city is a great city when 
it acquires a million people. Like the young Jew, Rose 
had not missed any atmosphere. The tall young man 
voiced her opinion when he said : 

“ This finicky criticism don't count. You might just 
as well talk about the lack of gondolas and old palaces in 
Boston. Conditions here are unexampled. It's a new 
town, and I think a splendid place to live in. Of 
course you can find fault anywhere.” 

Rose looked at him with interest. Such precision 
and unhesitancy of speech she had not heard since leav- 
ing college. 

Mary glowed with gratified admiration. The Jew 
was delighted, although he did not quite follow the im- 
plied rebuke. Miss Fletcher merely said : 

“ If Mr. Reed don't like Chicago, he is privileged to 
go back to Boston. I don't think Chicago would ex- 
perience any shock if he did.” 

Mr. Reed wilted a little, but he was not crushed. 

“The trouble with you people is you don't know 
anything about any otheh city. You come in heah 
from Oshkosh and Kalamazoo, and Okookono ” 


173 


Her First Conquest 

“Hit him on the back!” called Mary, “he’s choking.” 

“ O-con-o-mo-woc,” calmly interpreted Miss 
Fletcher. 

Reed recovered — “ An some otheh outlandish place 

yy 

“ How about Squantum and Skowhegan and Passa- 
maquoddy ” laughed Mary. 

Reed collapsed — “ Oh, well, those ah old, familiah 
)> 

The others shouted with laughter. 

“ Oh, yes I Everything old and New England goes. 
You are too provincial, old boy. You want to broaden 
out. I’ve seen a lot of fellows like you come here, 
snapping and snarling at Chicago, and end up by being 
wild promoters.” The Jew was at the bat, and the 
table applauded every hit. 

Rose did not share in the talk — she had so little 
knowledge of cities — but it served to make Mr. Tay- 
lor a strong figure in her eyes. He was tall and 
big-boned and unsmiling. He studied her with absent- 
minded interest, and she felt no irritation or embarrass- 
ment, for his eyes were kind and thoughtful. He 
looked at her as if she called up memories of some one 
he had loved in another world, and she somehow grew 
a little sad under his gaze. 

As they sat in her room after dinner, Mary asked : 

“ How do you like our crowd ? ” 

“ I can’t tell yet. I don’t like that Boston man. I 
never could bear the sound of ‘ ah.’ ” 

“ He’s a chump ; but they ain’t all like that. I have 


174 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

met two or three decent Boston fellows down in the 
office. Don’t think they are all muffs.” 

“ Of course not.” 

“ Now take my ‘ boss ’ for example. He’s fine. 
He’s big enough so you don’t mind his airs ; but what 
do you think of Mr. Taylor ? ” 

Rose looked thoughtful, and Mary hastened to say, 

“ Isn’t he fine ? ” She hoped to forestall criticism. 

“Yes, I think he’s fine. He makes me think of 
Professor Jenks.” 

“A-hagh ! so he does me. Say, Rose, I’m going to 
tell you something, don’t you ever tell, will you ? ” 

“ Why, no — of course not.” 

“ Hope to die ? ” 

“ Hope to die, hands crossed.” 

“Well !” 

“ Well ? ” 

“ I came here to board because he was here.” 

“ Why, Mary Compton ! ” 

“ Isn’t it awful ? Of course, no one knows it but 
you. I’d just die if he knew it. I used to be afraid 
that he’d find out, but he can’t, because, you see, he 
never saw me till I came here, and he thinks it is just 
accident. He’s so simple about such things anyway, 
and he’s always dreaming of something away off. Oh, 
he’s wonderful ! He’s been all over the mountains. 
He adores John Muir — you know that man Professor 
Ellis told us about ? Well, he’s lived just that way 
weeks and weeks in the wildest mountains, and it’s just 
glorious to hear him tell about it.” 


175 


Her First Conquest 

Rose was astonished at Mary, generally so self- 
contained. She talked as if she had volumes to tell and 
but short minutes to tell them in. Her cheeks glowed 
and her eyes grew deep and dark. 

‘‘ He’s here reading law, but he don’t need to work. 
He’s got a share in a big mine out there somewhere, 
which he discovered himself. He just thought he’d try 
civilization for a while, he said, and so he came to 
Chicago. He kind o’ pokes around the law school (it’s 
in our building — that’s where I saw him first, in the 
elevator), just as an excuse. He hates the law ; he told 
me so. He comes in to see me sometimes. Of course 
I leave the door open.” She smiled. “ But it don’t 
make any difference to him. He’s just the same here 
as he is anywhere — I mean he knows how to treat a 
woman. The school-ma’am said she thought it was 
terrible to have a man come into your room — the same 
room you sleep in — but I told her it depended on the 
man. That settled her, for Owen — I mean Mr. Tay- 
lor — don’t like her.” 

Rose listened in silence to this torrent of words from 
Mary. Her mind was naturally fictive, and she divined 
the immense world suggested by the girl’s incoherent 
sentences. The mysterious had come to her friend — 
the “one man of all the world,” apparently — a striking 
personality, quite suited to Mary, with her practical 
ways and love of fun. It confirmed her in her convic- 
tion that a girl must adventure into the city to win a 
place and a husband. 

She rose and put her arms about her friend’s neck : 


176 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


“ Pm so glad, Mary.” 

“ Oh, goodness ! don’t congratulate me yet ! He’s 
never said a word — and maybe he won’t. I can’t 
understand him — anyway it’s great fun.” 

A slow step crossed the hall, and a rap at the door 
nearly took away Mary’s breath ; for a moment she 
could not reply, then Mr. Taylor’s voice was heard. 

“ I beg your pardon.” He was turning away when 
Mary sprang up and opened the door. 

“ Oh, Mr. Taylor, is it you ? ” 

“Yes — I didn’t know but you and your friend would 
like to go out somewhere.” 

“ Would you. Rose ? ” 

“ Not to-night, thank you. But you go. Don’t keep 
in on my account.” 

Mary struggled a moment, then she smiled with ten- 
der archness. 

“Very well, thank you, Mr. Taylor. Pll be ready 
soon.” After he had gone she said : 

“ Perhaps he’ll propose ! ” 

Rose glowed sympathetically. “ I hope he will.” 
****** 

The next day Rose went down town alone. The wind 
had veered to the south, the dust blew, and the whole 
terrifying panorama of life in the streets seemed some 
way blurred together, and forms of men and animals 
were like figures in tapestry. The grind and clang and 
clatter and hiss and howl of the traffic was all about her. 

She came upon the river just as the bridge was being 
opened. Down toward the lake, which had to her all 


177 


Her First Conquest 

the wonder and expanse of the sea, boats lay thickly; 
steamers from deep water, long, narrow, and black, ex- 
cursion boats, gleaming white, and trimmed with shin- 
ing brass, lay beside the wharves, and low-lying tugs, 
sturdy, rowdyish little things, passed by, floating like 
ducks and pulling like bull-dogs, guiding great two- 
masted sailing boats and long, low grimy grain steamers, 
with high decks at the ends. The river ran below, 
gray-green, covered with floating refuse. Mountainous 
buildings stood on either side of the waterway. 

The draw, as it began to move, made a noise precisely 
like an old-fashioned threshing machine — a rising howl, 
which went to Rose’s heart like a familiar voice. Her 
eyes for a moment released hold upon the scene before 
her, and took a slant far over the town to the coolly 
farm, and the days when the threshing machine howled 
and rattled in the yard came back, and she was rushing 
to get dinner ready for the crew. When the bridge re- 
turned to its place she walked slowly across, studying 
each vista. To the west, other bridges, swarming with 
people, arched the stream — on each side was equal mys- 
tery. These wonderful great boats and their grim brave 
sailors she had read about, but had never seen. They 
came from far up the great tumultuous lake, and they 
were going to anchor somewhere in that wild tangle of 
masts and chimneys and towering big buildings to the 
west. They looked as if they might go to the ends of 
the earth. At the stern of an outgoing boat four sailors 
were pulling at a rope, the leader singing a wild, thrill- 
ing song in time to the action. 


N 


178 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

So it was that the wonderful and the terrifying ap- 
pealed to her mind first. In all the city she saw the 
huge and the fierce. She perceived only contrasts. She 
saw the ragged newsboy and the towering policeman. 
She saw the rag-pickers, the street vermin, with a shud- 
der of pity and horror, and she saw also the gorgeous 
show windows of the great stores. She saw the beauti- 
ful new gowns and hats, and she saw also the curious 
dresses of swart Italian girls scavenging with baskets on 
their arms. Their faces were old and grimy, their voices 
sounded like the chattered colloquies of the monkeys in 
the circus. 

The street seemed a battle-field. There was no hint 
of repose or home in such a city. People were just 
staying here like herself, trying to get work, trying to 
make a living, trying to make a name. They had left 
their homes as she had, and though she conceived of 
them as having a foothold, she could not imagine them 
as having reached security. The home-life of the city 
had not revealed itself to her. 

She made her way about the first few blocks below 
Water Street, looking for Dr. Herrick’s address. It 
was ten o’clock, and the streets were in a frenzy of ex- 
change. The sidewalks were brooks, the streets rivers 
of life, which curled into doors and swirled around 
mountainous buildings. 

She was pathetically helpless in the midst of these 
alien sounds. It took away from her the calm, almost 
scornful, self-reliance which characterized her in familiar 
surroundings. Her senses were as acute as a hare’s, and 


179 


Her First Conquest 

sluiced in upon her a bewildering flood of sights and 
sounds. She did not appear childish, but she seemed 
slow and stupid, which of course she was not. She 
thought and thought till she grew sick with thought. 
She struggled to digest all that came to her, but it was 
like trampling sand ; she apparently gained nothing by 
her toil. 

The streets led away into thunderous tunnels, beyond 
which some other strange hell of sound and stir imagi- 
natively lay. The brutal voices of drivers of cabs and 
drays assaulted her. The clang of gongs drew her 
attention, now here, now there, and her anxiety to un- 
derstand each sound and to appear calm added to her 
confusion. 

She heard crashes and yells that were of murder and 
sudden death. It was the crash of a falling bundle of 
sheet iron, but she knew not that. She looked around 
thinking to see some savage, bloody battle-scene. 

She saw women with painted faces and bleached hair 
whom she took to be those mysterious and appalling 
women who sell themselves to men. They were in 
fact simple-minded shop girls or vulgar little housewives 
with sad lack of taste. 

Every street she crossed, she studied, looking both up 
and down it, in the effort to come at the end of its 
mystery — but they all vanished in lurid, desolate dis- 
tance, save toward the lake. Out there, she knew, the 
water lay serene and blue. 

This walk was to her like entrance into war. It 
thrilled and engaged her at every turn. She was in the 


i8o Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

centre of human life. To win here was to win all she 
cared to have. 

It was a relief to pass into the rotunda of the splendid 
building in which Dr. Herrick’s office was. Outside 
the war sounded, and around her men hastened as if to 
rescue. She entered the elevator as one in a dream. 
The man hustled her through the door without cere- 
mony and clanged the door as if it were a prison gate. 
They soared to the ninth floor like a balloon suddenly 
liberated, and the attendant fairly pushed her out. 

“ Here’s your floor — Herrick, to the left.” 

Rose was humiliated and indignant, but submitted. 
The hallway along which she moved was marble and 
specklessly clean. On each side doors of glass with 
letters in black set forth the occupations of the tenants. 

She came at length to the half-open door of Dr. 
Herrick’s office and timidly entered. A young girl 
came forward courteously. 

“Would you like to see the Doctor? ” she asked, in 
a soft voice. 

“Yes, please. I have a letter to her from Dr. 
Thatcher of Madison.” 

“Oh! well, I will take it right in. Be seated, please.” 
This good treatment, and the soft voice of the girl, 
were very grateful after the hoarse war-cries of the 
street. Rose looked around the little room with grow- 
ing composure and delight. It was such a dainty little 
waiting-room, and augured something attractive in Dr. 
Herrick. 

“ Come right in,” the girl said on returning. “ The 


Her First Conquest i8i 

Doctor is attending to her mail, but she will see you for 
a few moments.” 

Rose entered the second and larger room, and faced a 
small, graceful woman, of keen, alert glance. She 
appeared to be about thirty-five years of age. She 
shook hands briskly, but not warmly. 

Her hand was small and firm and her tone quick and 
decisive. ‘‘ How-d’-you-do ? Sit down ! I had a note 
from Dr. Thatcher the other day saying I might ex- 
pect you.” 

Rose took a chair while the Doctor studied her, sit- 
ting meanwhile with small, graceful head leaning on one 
palm, her elbow on the corner of her desk. No woman’s 
eyes ever searched Rose like those of this little woman, 
and she rebelled against it inwardly, as Dr. Herrick 
curtly asked: 

“ Well, now, what can I do for you ? Dr. Thatcher 
thought I could do something for you.” 

Rose was too dazed to reply. This small, resolute, 
brusque woman was a world’s wonder to her. She 
looked down and stammered. 

“ I don’t know — I — thought maybe you could help 
me to find out what I could do.” 

The Doctor studied her for an instant longer. She 
saw a large, apparently inexperienced girl, a little sullen 
and a little embarrassed — probably stupid. 

“ Don’t you know what you want to do ? ” 

tc — that is, I want to write,” confessed Rose. 

. “ Write ! My dear girl, every addle-pate wants to 
write. Have you friends in the city ? ” 


i 82 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 


“ One ; a classmate.” 

« Man ? ” 

“ No, a girl.” 

“ Why did you leave home ? ” 

Rose began to grow angry. “ Because I couldn’t live 
the life of a cow or a cabbage. I wanted to see the city.” 

The Doctor arose. “ Come here a moment.” Rose 
obeyed and stood beside her at the window, and they 
looked out across a stretch of roofs, heaped and humped 
into mountainous masses, blurred and blent and made 
appalling by smoke and plumes of steam. A scene 
as desolate as a burnt-out volcano — a jumble of hot 
bricks, jagged eave-spouts, gas-vomiting chimneys, spiked 
railings, glass skylights, and lofty spires, a hideous and 
horrible stretch of stone' and mortar, cracked and seamed 
into streets. It had no limits and it palpitated under 
the hot September sun, boundless and savage. At the 
bottom of the crevasses men and women speckled the 
pavement like minute larvae. 

“ Is that what you came here to see ? ” asked the 
Doctor. 

Rose drew a deep breath and faced her. 

“Yes, and I’m not afraid of it. It’s mighty ! It is 
grander than I expected it to be — grand and terrible, 
but it’s where things are done.” 

Isabel Herrick studied her a little closer. 

“ You’d leave your country home for this ? ” 

Rose turned upon her and towered above her. Her 
eyes flashed and her abundant eyebrows drew down in 
a dark scowl. 


Her First Conquest 183 

‘‘Would you be content to spend your life, day and 
night, summer and winter, in Butcher's Coolly ? ” 

“ Pardon me,” said Dr. Herrick, cuttingly, “ the 

problem is not the same. I have not the same 1 

the question ” 

“Yes, who are born in the city and who come up 
to see us on the farms for a couple of weeks in June — 
you take it on yourselves to advise us to stay there ! 
You who succeed are always ready to discourage us 
when we come to try our fortunes. I can succeed just 
as well as you, and I'll make you bow your head to me 
before I am five years older.'' 

She was magnificent, masterful, in the flaming heat of 
her wrath. This little woman had gone too far. 

Dr. Herrick turned abruptly. 

“ I guess I've made a mistake ; sit down again,'' she 
said, in softer tones. 

Rose was not yet done. She kept her lofty pose. 

“Yes, you certainly have. I am not afraid of this 
city ; I can take care of myself. I wouldn't be under 
obligations to you now for the world. I want you to 
know I'm not a beggar asking a dollar from you ; I'm 
not a schoolgirl, either. I know what I can do and 
you don't. I wouldn't have troubled you, only for Dr. 
Thatcher.'' She moved toward the door, gloriously 
angry, too angry to say good-day. 

The Doctor's cold little face lighted up. She smiled 
the most radiant smile, and it made her look all at once 
like a girl. 

“My dear — I am crushed. I am an ant at your 


184 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

feet. Come here now, you great splendid creature, and 
let me hug you this minute.” 

Rose kept on to the door, where she turned : “ I 
don’t think I ought to trouble you further,” she said 
coldly. 

The Doctor advanced. “ Come now, I beg your 
pardon. I’m knocked out. I took you for one of 
those romantic country girls, who come to the city — 
helpless as babes. Come back.” 

Rose came near going on. If she had, it would have 
lost her a good friend. She felt that, and so when the 
Doctor put an arm around her to lead her back to the 
desk she yielded, though she was still palpitating with 
the fervor of her wrath. 

“ My dear, you fairly scared me. I never was so 
taken by surprise in my life ; tell me all about yourself ; 
tell me how you came to come, where you are — and 
all about it.” 

Rose told her — not all, of course — she told her of 
her college work, of her father, of the coolly, and of 
her parting from her father. 

“ Oh, yes,” the Doctor interrupted, “ that’s the way 
we go on — we new men and women. The ways of 
our fathers are not ours ; it’s tragedy either way you 
put it. Go on ! ” 

At last she had the story, told with marvellous 
unconscious power, direct, personal, full of appeal. She 
looked at Rose with reflective eyes for a little space. 

“Well, now we’ll take time to consider. Bring me 
something of yours ; I’ll show it to a friend of mine, an 


Her First Conquest 185 

editor here, and if it pleases him we’ll know what to 
do. And come and see me. I’ll introduce you to 
some nice people. Chicago is full of nice people if you 
only come at them. Come and see me to-morrow, can’t 
you ? Oh, you great, splendid creature ! I wish I had 
your inches.” She glowed with admiration. 

“ Come Sunday at six and dine with me,” yielding to 
a sudden impulse. “Come early and let me talk to 
you.” 

Rose promised and they went out into the waiting- 
room. 

“ Etta, dear, this is Miss Dutcher ; this is my sister. 
I want you to know each other.” The little girl tiptoed 
up and took Rose’s hand with a little inarticulate murmur. 

There was a patient in waiting, but Dr. Herrick 
ignored her and conducted Rose to the door. 

“ Good-by, dear. I’m glad you came. You’ve given 
me a good shaking up. Remember, six, sharp ! ” 

She looked after Rose with a wonderful glow in her 
heart. 

“ The girl is a genius — a jewel in the rough,” she 
thought. “ She must be guided. Heavens ! How she 
towered.” 

When she stepped into the street Rose felt taller and 
stronger, and the street was less appalling. She raised 
her eyes to the faces of the men she met. Her eyes 
had begun their new search. The men streamed by in 
hundreds ; impressive in mass, but comparatively unin- 
teresting singly. 

It was a sad comment upon her changing conceptions 


i86 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


of life that she did not look at the poorly dressed men, 
the workmen. She put them aside as out of the ques- 
tion; not consciously, for the search at this stage was 
still unconscious, involuntary, like that of a bird seeking 
a mate, moved by a law which knows neither individ- 
uals nor time. 

She saw also the splendor of the shop windows. She 
had a distinct love for beautiful fabrics as works of art, 
but she cared less for dress than one would suppose to 
see her lingering before great luminous cataracts of 
drapery. She was quietly and gracefully dressed, beyond 
this she had never cared to go, but she constructed 
wonderful homes and owners out of the glimpses of 
these windows, and from the passing of graceful young 
girls, clothed like duchesses, and painted (some of them) 
like women of the under world. 

It all grew oppressive and disheartening to her at last, 
and she boarded a State Street car (the only car she 
knew) and took her way up home. All the people in 
the car looked at her as if she had intruded into a pri- 
vate drawing-room. 

She was evidently from the country, for, though it 
was in the day of quaintness, she wore her hair plain. 
It was also the middle period of the curious and inex- 
plicable little swagger which all duly informed girls 
assumed ; but Rose walked on her strong elastic feet 
with a powerful swing, which was worth going miles to 
see. It was due to her unconscious imitation of the 
proud carriage of William De Lisle. She loved that 
forward swing of the thigh, with the flex of the side 


Her First Conquest 187 

which accompanied it. It was her ideal of motion, that 
free action of knee, waist, and neck, which she felt 
rather than saw in the great athlete. 

She made a goodly figure to look at, and it was no 
especial wonder that the people in the car scrutinized 
her. Her forehead was prominent and her eyes were 
sombre. It was impossible for the casual observer to 
define why she made so marked an impression upon 
him. It was because she was so fresh and strong, and 
unaffected and unconscious. 

At lunch she found no one but Mr. Taylor, who 
loomed up at the farther end of the table, with gaunt, 
grave face and broad shoulders like a farmer. She 
studied him closely, now that she knew more about 
him. He had a big, wide, plain face, with gentle gray 
eyes. His beard was trimmed round and made him 
look older than he was. He was a man into whose 
eyes women could look unafraid and unabashed. He 
greeted Rose with a smile. 

“ Fm very glad you’ve come. I was afraid I should 
eat lunch alone. With your permission Fll move down 
to your end of the table.” 

Rose was very glad to have him take a seat near, and 
they were friends at once. They naturally fell upon 
Mary as a topic. Mr. Taylor spoke of her quietly : 

“ Mary’s a fine girl,” he said. ‘‘ I don’t like to see 
her work. I don’t like to see any woman do work 
like that. I don’t claim any right to say what women 
shall do or not do, but I imagine they wouldn’t go into 
shops if they were not, in a way, forced into it.” 


i88 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

Rose defended the right of a girl to earn her own 
living. He hastened to explain further : 

“ Of course a woman should be free and independent, 
but is she free when pressure forces her into typewriting 
or working in a sweat-shop ? ” 

Rose turned his thoughts at last by asking about the 
West. He expanded like flame at the thought. 

“ Ah ! the old equatorial wind is blowing to-day, and 
my hair crackles with electricity.” He smiled as he 
ran his hands through his hair. “ On such days I long 
for my pony again. Sometimes, when I can’t stand it 
any longer, I take a train to some little station and go 
out and lie flat down on the grass on my back, so that I 
can’t see anything but sky j then I can almost imagine 
myself back again where the lone old peaks bulge 
against the sky. Do you know John Muir and Joaquin 
Miller .? ” 

“ I know a little of them,” said Rose. Taylor’s eyes 
glowed with enthusiasm. 

“There are two men who know the wilderness. 
Your Thoreau I’ve read, but he don’t interest me the 
way these Rocky Mountain fellows do. Your Eastern 
fellows don’t really know a wilderness — they’re sort o’ 
back pasture explorers. John isn’t a bit theatrical, he’s 
been there. He doesn’t take a train of guides to ex- 
plore a glacier, he sticks a crust of bread in his belt 
along with a tin cup, and goes alone. I’ve been with 
John in the Sierras, and once he came over into my 
range.” 

Rose defended Emerson and Thoreau as if she were 


Her First Conquest 189 

the Easterner this Colorado hunter considered her. As 
she talked he fixed great absent-minded eyes upon her, 
and absorbed every line of her face, every curve of her 
lips — every changing wave of color. 

“ I don’t care for the wilderness as you do. What is 
a bird compared to a man, anyway ? I like people. I 
want to be where dramas are being played. Men make 
the world, bears don’t.” She argued, hotly. 

He slowly withdrew his gaze. 

“I guess you’re right.” He smiled a wise smile. 
‘‘ If the wilderness had been everything in the world, I 
wouldn’t be here. A woman is more than a flower. 
A woman would make my mountains a paradise.” 

‘‘ You have no right to ask a woman to go there with 
you — not to stay,” she added, quickly. 

His smile passed. 

“ You’re right again. Unless I could find a woman 
who loves the wilderness as I do.” 

“ That is out of the question,” she replied. “No 
woman loves the wilderness — as a home. All women 
love cities and streets and children.” She had a young 
person’s readiness to generalize, and pitilessly flung these 
hopeless truisms at him. He arose, apparently made 
sadder by them. He sighed. 

“But civilization carries such terrible suffering with 
it.” 

Rose went to her room and looked at her other let- 
ters of introduction. Should she present them .? What 
would be the use. The scene with Dr. Herrick had not 
been pleasant; true, it had apparently brought her a 


190 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

friend, but it was a rigorous experience, and she hardly 
felt it worth while at the moment to go through another 
such scene to win another such friend. 

She fell to looking over her manuscripts. They were 
on lined paper, stitched together at the top. They were 
imitative, of course, and leaned toward the Elizabethan 
drama, and toward Tennyson and Mrs. Browning, so 
far as verse-form went. There were also essays which 
she had written at college, which inquired mournfully, 
who will take the place of the fallen giants, Bryant, 
Longfellow, Emerson ? She had eloquent studies of 
Hugo and valiant defences of Dickens. She reflected 
in her writing (naturally) all the conventional positions 
in literature. She stood upon the graves of the dead as 
if she feared they might be desecrated. 

She was a pupil, and as a pupil she had considered lit- 
erature as something necessarily afar off, in England or 
France, in Boston and Cambridge, though she had come 
to think Chicago might be a place suitable for a humble 
beginning, but that it might be the subject of literature 
had not occurred to her. She had never known a person 
who had written a book. Professor Ellis and the Presi- 
dent had written scientific treatises, but, not being a fool, 
she knew there was a difference between getting an arti- 
cle into a country weekly and getting into a big daily, to 
say nothing of the great magazines. She wished for ad- 
vice. Being out in the world now, something must be 
done with her writings. 

These essays were good and thoughtful, they repre- 
sented study and toil, but they did not represent her real 


Her First Conquest 19 1 

self, her real emotions, any more than her reading rep- 
resented her real liking. Her emotions, big, vital, con- 
temporaneous, had no part in this formal and colorless 
pedantry. Of this she was still ignorant, however. 

She was sorting her poems over and dreaming about 
them when Mary came home. 

“ Oh, you dear ! I’ve been thinking about you all 
day. Did you see your woman doctor ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

‘‘ Did you like her ? ” 

“Well, I don’t know — yes, I think I do. I didn’t 
at first.” 

“ Where else did you go ? ” 

“ Nowhere. I came home to lunch.” 

“ Eat alone ? ” Mary was taking off her things and 
was more than usually fragmentary. 

“No. Mr. Taylor was there.” Mary faced her. 

“ Now see here. Rose Dutcher, do you want to break 
my heart into smithereens If you do, you go on lunch- 
ing with Owen Taylor.” 

Rose laughed at her tone of simulated sorrow and 
dismay. 

“ He moved down to my end of the table, too.” 

Mary plumped into a chair in pretended collapse. 

“Well, that finishes me. I’m coming home to lunch 
after this. If you prove a terrater^ I’ll have your back 
hair. Rose Dutcher.” 

“ I couldn’t help it. He didn’t want to shout at me 
across the table.” 

Mary’s voice softened. 


192 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


“ What did you talk about ? ” 

“ He talked about you.” 

“ Did he ? What did he say ? ” 

“ He said you were a good girl, and you are.” 

« Is that , all ? ” 

“ What more could you ask ? ” 

“ He might ’ave praised me beauty ! ” Then she 
laughed and rushed at Rose and hugged her for some 
reason not expressed. “ Isn’t he just grand ? ” 

“ I’m going out to dinner Sunday night ! ” 

“ Where ? Woman doctor’s ? ” 

“ Yes. I met her sister, too.” 

“ Oh, you’ll soon be getting so swell you won’t notice 
us. Well, anyhow, you’ll leave me Owen ? ” 

In the mood in which she went to sleep that night 
there was no premonition of conquest. The tide of her 
life sank low. It was impossible for her to succeed — 
she, a little country girl, of five feet nine. She looked 
at her bulk as it showed under the quilts. How small 
a thing she was to be set over against the mighty 
city. 

And yet Napoleon was less than she. And Patti and 
Edwin Booth were not so large. The life of a great 
actor, like Edwin Booth, a singer, like Patti, interested 
her deeply. She wondered that they could do things 
like other people. They were so public, so admired, so 
lifted into the white-hot glare of success. 

She brought her mind back to the point. They suc- 
ceeded, small beings though they were j they faced the 


Her First Conquest 193 

millions of the earth and became the masters, the kings 
and queens of art. 

By what necromancy did they do this ? If it was 
born in them, then there was hope for her ; if they 
reached it by toil, then, surely, there was hope for her. 


CHAPTER XVII 


HER FIRST DINNER OUT 

Rose went to see the parts of the city which no true 
Chicagoan ever visits. That is to say she spent Sunday 
in the park, admiring, with pathetic fortitude, the sward, 
the curving drives, the bridges and the statues, in com- 
pany with the lowly and nameless multitude — she even 
crowded in to see the animals. 

She had intended to get back to church, conformable 
to Mary’s programme, which was to start at St. James, 
and go in rotation to all the great churches and hear the 
choirs ; but it happened that on this first Sunday there 
was a fine west wind, and the many ships were setting 
sail to the north, close inshore, and when Rose found 
sh© could sit on the park benches and see those mighty 
birds of commerce sail by she was content to do that 
and nothing more. 

She had no cheap, easy, and damnable comparisons. 
The passage of each purple-sailed lumber freighter was 
a poem to her. They floated noiselessly, effortlessly, 
on a beautiful sea of color. They drave like butterflies 
in dreams, their motive power indiscernible. 

She sat with her chin in her palm, her big eyes like 
194 


Her First Dinner Out 


195 


beautiful windows, letting in the sunshine and the grace 
of ships and clouds without effort, fixed in an ecstasy of 
reverie. Around her streamed floods of the city’s 
newly acquired residents, clerks, bookkeepers, type- 
writers, shop-girls, butchers’ boys, salesmen, all fresh 
from the small towns and from the farms of the West. 
As the ships passed, she gave her attention to these 
people — recognized in them many familiar types. 
There was the smart young man, son of the tavern- 
keeper in Cyene. There was a blundering big wag, 
who looked like Ed Smith of Molasses Gap. There 
were types like Mary, hearty, loud-voiced, cheery, 
wholesome, whom the city could never rob of their 
native twang. There were Tom and Grace and Elsa 
and Bert and all the rest of the bright, restless spirits of 
the country towns and wide-awake school districts come 
to try their fortunes in the great city like herself. 

They wore bargains in ready-made clothing pretty 
generally, but it was up-to-date and each one was clean 
as a new dime. They laughed, shouted jokes, scuffled 
and pushed the girls, quite in the good country way. 
They made quaint and sometimes insolent remarks 
about the park and its adornments, assuming the blase 
airs of old residents, in pointing out to the later arrivals 
the various attractions. 

There came by other groups, as alien to Rose as the 
foregoing were familiar. Dark-skinned, queer, bow- 
legged, bewhiskered little men, followed by their wives 
and children, all sallow and crooked. Great droves, 
whole neighborhoods drifted along, chattering unintel- 


196 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

ligible languages as incomprehensible to the country girl 
as Chinese. Whether they were Italians or Jews or 
Bohemians she could not tell, but she could see the marks 
of hunger and hard work on their pallid faces. These 
were, no doubt, the people who moved about under the 
murk of that deadly region through which she had been 
borne by her train that first night. 

She went home from this first visit to the park op- 
pressed and overborne with the multitude of her new 
impressions. She felt quite as she did upon her return 
from the Art Institute, to which she had hastened early 
in the first week. So much that was artificially beauti- 
ful tired and irritated her, like eating a meal of honey 
and sponge-cake. Her head ached with the formal 
curves of the drives, with the unchanging fixedness of 
the statues, just as the unnatural murky tones of the 
landscapes in frames gave her vague discomfort. 

In the few days between her meeting with Isabel and 
her dinner she saw the Wheat Exchange (which inter- 
ested her mightily, like battle), she went again to the 
Art Institute, she visited other parks, she went to the top 
of the Masonic Temple, and did many other things which 
the native high-class Chicagoan prides himself on never 
doing. Happily she apprehended not at all the enor- 
mity of her offence ; on the contrary, she was seeing 
life, and this feeling compensated her when she did not 
otherwise enjoy “ a sight.” It was a duty, and she felt 
grateful to the unknown city officials for the chance to 
see these things, even if it nearly broke her neck and tired 
her out to see them, She looked forward to her dinner 


Her First Dinner Out 


197 


with great interest. She had thought a great deal about 
Dr. Herrick, and had come to the conclusion that she 
was not much to blame. “ I suppose she thought I 
was a poor helpless ninny come in to ask her for a 
job,” she said to Mary. 

“Well, she couldn’t have had much gumption,” Mary 
loyally replied. 

Mary came home from a walk with Mr. Taylor on 
purpose to help Rose “ fix up and get off,” but found 
her quite dressed and watching the clock. 

“Well, you are a prompt one! Stand up now, and 
let me see if you’re all right.” 

Rose obediently stood up and was twirled about in 
various lights. 

“ That’s fine ! That gray dress is such a fit, and 
scarlet goes well with it. Oh, you sweet thing ! 
How’re you going to get home ? ” 

“Walk, of course.” 

“ Shall I send Owen over for you ? ” 

They both laughed at her tone. 

“ Oh, what a self-sacrificing friend ! ” Rose ex- 
claimed. “ I guess I can walk home alone. I’m not 
afraid of the dark.” 

“ Oh, it isn’t that. It would be sweller to have some- 
one come after you.” 

“Well, you and Owen both come.” 

“ Well, I’ll see. If I feel safe by nine-thirty I’ll 
send him. But if you’re not back here by ten o’clock 
I’ll be after ye.” This made them both laugh again. 

“ Where is this address ? ” 


198 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


Rose gave her the card. 

“ Why, this is away up in the swell part. My, but 
you are cornin’ on ! ” Mary clucked with her tongue. 

You’ll be calling on the Lake Drive soon.” 

Rose looked neat and altogether well composed in her 
simple gray dress and sober-hued bonnet and gloves. 
She wasn’t in the very latest fall fashion, of course, but 
she was not noticeably out of vogue. She felt quite at 
ease as she walked up the street. 

This ease began to desert her as the houses grew 
larger and the door-plates more ornate. What if Dr. 
Herrick lived in one of these houses! They were not, 
of course, palatial like those houses on the lake front, 
but they looked too grand for any of her friends to live 
in. Her fear of getting tangled in social intricacies 
grew keener as she walked up the steps to a large 
cream-colored brick building. The mystery of “ flats ” 
was to be faced. The entrance was tiled and flecklessly 
clean. On the right were three bells, one above the 
other. Over the second one she saw Dr. Herrick’s 
name. She pulled the bell and waited for developments. 

Suddenly a hollow voice, hoarse and breathy, from 
the wall. 

“ Kim roight up.” She turned to the inner door 
which opened mysteriously, and a small boy in buttons 
motioned her to the elevator. She began to comprehend 
and felt grateful to the small boy for his considerate 
gravity. 

At the landing the door was opened by Etta, the 
pretty little sister. 


Her First Dinner Out 


199 


She said “ How-do-you-do ! in her soft, timid little 
voice, and let Rose into an exquisite little bedroom off 
the hall and asked her to lay off her hat. She stood in 
awe of Rose, who seemed very large and stern to her. 

Rose felt a little nervous about what was to come 
after, but contrived to keep outwardly calm while fol- 
lowing her gentle guide along the hall and into a small 
reception-room. Isabel arose and greeted her with a 
smile of delight. 

‘‘ Ah ! here you are ! Do you know I began to fear 
you were mythical — that I’d dreamed you. Warren, 
this is Miss Dutcher. Miss Butcher, Mr. Mason.” 
A slow, large man stepped forward and looked her in 
the face with penetrating eyes. He was a little taller 
than she was and his face had a weary look. He was 
blond as a Norwegian. 

“ I am very glad you’re not a myth,” he said, and his 
face lost its tired look for a moment, his voice was very 
beautiful. 

“This is my nephew, Mr. Paul Herrick;” a slim 
young man came up to shake hands. He was plainly a 
college man, and Rose comprehended him at once. 

Isabel’s voice changed and a little flush came to her 
face as she put her hand on the shoulder of a tall, black- 
bearded man standing quietly in the shadow. 

“ This is Dr. Sanborn, my husband-who-is-to-be.” 

“ If nothing happens.” He smiled as he shook hands. 

“ If she doesn’t conclude to take me instead,” re- 
marked Mason. 

Rose had perception enough at command to apprehend 


200 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


the powerful personalities grouped about her. She sat 
near Dr. Sanborn, with whom she was at ease at once, 
he was so awkward and so kindly. He took off his 
glasses and polished them carefully as if anxious to see 
her better. 

“ Isabel tells me you gave her a little lecture the other 
day. Fm glad of it. We city folks need it once 
in awhile. We get to thinking that country folks are 
necessarily fools and stupids by reason of our farce- 
comedies and our so-called comic weeklies.” 

“We’re not so bad as that,” said Rose. 

“ Of course not ; nobody could be so bad as that.” 

Isabel took a seat near Mason. “ I tell you, Warren, 
that girl has a future before her.” 

“ No doubt. It couldn’t well be behind her.” 

“ Don’t be flippant ! See that head ! But it isn’t that 
— she has power. I feel it, she made me feel it. I 
want you to see some of her writing and see what can 
be done for her.” 

Mason looked bored. “ Writes, does she ? ” 

“ Of course she writes. See that head, I say.” 

“ I see the head and it’s a handsome head. I’ll con- 
cede that. So is Sanborn’s, but he can’t write a pre- 
scription without a printed form.” 

“ Oh, well, if you are in the mood to be irreverent ! ” 

Mason’s face lighted up. “There, you can write! 
Anyone who is capable of a touch like that — in the 
presence of gods, men should be meek. At the same 
time I would hasten to warn you, the Doctor is becom- 
ing marvellously interested in this girl with a future. 


Her First Dinner Out 


201 


He has faced her ; he is actually touching her knee with 
his forefinger ! ” 

Isabel laughed. ‘‘ He always does that when he ar- 
gues anything. It won’t do any harm.” 

“ It mightn’t do him any harm, or you for that mat- 
ter, — but that innocent country girl ! ” 

“She can take care of herself. You should have 
heard her put me down in my chair. I want you to 
take her in to dinner.” 

“I — madam ? Etta is my choice, after the hostess, 
of course. I’m a little shy of these girls who write.” 

“Well, you take me in and I’ll let Paul take Rose, 
but I want her to sit by you. I invited you, of all the 
men of my vast acquaintance,' because I hoped your 
trained and fictive eye would see and appreciate her.” 

“ My trained and fictive eye is regarding her, but 
maybe she is like an impressionist painting, better seen 
at a little distance. I confess she is attractive at this 

focus, but oh, if her mind ” 

“ You need not worry about her mind. She’s a ge- 
nius. Well, I guess Professor Roberts is not coming. 
Suppose we go in ! ” 

“ Aren’t we rather formal to-night ? ” 

“ Well, yes, but Dr. Sanborn had no dinner in the 
middle of the day, so I transferred ours.” 

“I’m glad you did, for I’m hungry too.” 

And so it happened Rose found herself seated beside 
the big blond man whose face seemed so weary and so 
old. Paul sat on her left, and they chatted easily on 
college affairs. He was from Ann Arbor, he told her. 


202 


Rose of Dutcher's Coolly 


Rose looked with wonder at Dr. Herrick. She was 
quite another woman, entirely unprofessional. Her 
face was warm with color, and she wore an exquisite 
dress, simple as a uniform, yet falling into graceful soft 
folds about her feet. Her brown hair was drawn about 
her pretty head in wavy masses. Her eyes sparkled 
with the pleasure and pride of being hostess to such 
company. Altogether she looked scarcely older than 
Rose. The table was set with tall candles with colored 
shades, and the simple little dinner was exquisitely 
served. At the same time it all seemed artificial and 
unhomelike to Rose. The home which had no cellar 
and no yard was to her false, transitory, and unwhole- 
some, no matter how lovely the walls might be. Air 
seemed lacking and the free flow of electricity. It was 
like staying in an hotel. 

Mason turned to her after a little talk with Etta. 

“ And so you have joined the stream of fortune-seekers 
setting always to the city. Do you feel yourself to be a 
part of a predestinated movement ? ” 

“ I did not when I started — I do now.” 

“ That’s right. This is the Napoleon of cities. A 
city of colossal vices and colossal virtues. It is now 
devouring, one day it will begin to send back its best 
arterial blood into the nation. My metaphor is a bit 
questionable, but that is due to my two minds concern- 
ing this salad — I alternately curse and bow down in 
wonder before this city. Its future is appalling to think 
of. In 1920 it will be the mightiest centre of the 
English-speaking race — thank you. I’ll not take any 


Her First Dinner Out 


203 


more dressing — I envy you young people who come 
now when the worst of the fight against material greed 
is nearly over. We who have given twenty years of 
our lives — I beg your pardon. I don’t know why I 
should moralize for your benefit — I meant to say I 
hope you have not come to Chicago to make your 
living.” 

“ Why, yes — I hope to — but my father gives me a 
little to live on till I find something to do.” 

“That’s good. Then sit down and watch the city. 
It doesn’t matter how humble your living place — sit 
above the city’s tumult. Observe it, laugh at it, but 
don’t fight it — don’t mix in the grind. Keep it in 
your brain, don’t let it get into your blood.” 

Rose looked at him in wonder, his voice was so quiet 
and his words so vibrant with meaning. 

“I never felt so drawn to a woman in my life,” 
Isabel said to her betrothed. “ I don’t pretend to 
understand it. I just love her this minute.” 

“With due qualifications I can agree with you, my 
dear. She is very promising indeed.” 

“ She has the power that compels. I wish she’d get 
hold of Mason.” Isabel smiled wisely. “You see 
Mason is really listening to her now, and poor Etta is 
left alone. I wish Professor Roberts were here. He’s 
such good fun for her. Before the evening’s out every 
man in the house will be hovering around that Wis- 
consin girl, and I don’t blame ’em a bit.” 

A little later the maid announced Professor Roberts. 

“ Ah ! bring him right in, Mary ! ” 


204 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

A cheery voice was heard in the hallway. 

“ Don’t rise, I’ll find a place somewhere. I am 
delinquent I know ; what’s this — a roast ? ” 

“ Now don’t you pretend to be starving just to please 
me; this Sunday evening dinner was given for me 
especially,” said Sanborn. 

“ Hungry ? Of course I’m hungry. I’ve come all 
the way from Fifty-second Street.” 

Professor Roberts was a middle-aged man, with a 
chin whisker. He had a small, elegant figure, and his 
eyes were humorous. 

Everybody took on new life the moment he came in. 

“ The fact is I got bridged,” he explained, after being 
introduced to Rose. 

“ All for living on the South Side,” said Paul. 

“ I know — I know ! However, somebody must live 
on the South Side, and so I stay to keep up the general 
average.” 

“ How modest and kind of you ! ” 

“ Professor belongs to the University settlement — 
down near the Indiana line,” explained Paul to Rose. 

“ Anybody’d think, to hear you North Siders talk, 
that Fifty-second Street was at the uttermost parts of 
the earth.” 

“ It is.” 

“Well, we don’t have weekly burglaries on our 
side.” 

“We no longer sing ‘Lily Dale’ and the Sankey 
hymns up ^here.” 

All this banter was amusing to Rose. It opened to 


Her First Dinner Out 


205 


her the inner social landmarks of the city. She didn’t 
know before that there was a West Side and a North 
Side to the city. 

Professor Roberts bubbled over with fun. He was 
curiously like some of the men Rose had known at 
Bluff Siding. His chin whiskers, his mirthful eyes, and 
his hearty laughter were familiar as a dandelion. What 
could he be professor of, she thought — and asked her 
neighbor. 

Paul told her. “ He’s professor of geology and 
paleontology, and knows, besides, a tremendous lot 
about bugs and animals. He made a trip up into the 
Yukon country a year or two ago. He was gone 
eighteen months, with no one but a couple of Indian 
guides. He’s a big fellow, for all he’s so jolly and 
everyday in his manners.” 

The talk that went on was a revelation of intellectual 
subtlety to the country girl. The three men addressed 
themselves to Isabel, and every conceivable subject 
received some sort of mention. Roberts joked inces- 
santly, and Dr. Sanborn held him a good second, while 
Mason said the most enigmatical things in his smooth, 
melodious bass. His face lost its heavy look under the 
eyes, and his smile became very attractive — though he 
did not laugh. 

Rose sat with them, absorbed in the touch and go, 
brilliancy and fun, of the talk. It was wonderful to her 
that Dr. Herrick could sit so entirely at ease before 
three such keen conversationalists as these men seemed 
to be. 


2o6 Rose of Dutcher*s Coolly 

After dinner the talk took on a quieter tone. Mason 
asked the privilege of ruminating over his coffee and 
cigar. 

“ Ruminate, yes ; but don’t make it an excuse for 
going to sleep,” said Isabel. “ You must wake up at 
any rate and tell us a story before the evening is over.” 

She got Roberts started on his recent trip to see the 
Indian snake-dance at Walpi, and they listened breath- 
lessly till he rounded up safely half-an-hour later. Then 
Dr. Sanborn was called upon. 

“ Come, Doctor, we must have your song ! ” 

‘‘ His song ! ” exclaimed Roberts. 

“ One song ? ” asked Mason. 

One song alone is all he knows, and the only way 
he acquired that was by damnable iteration. It was a 
cheerful lay sung by his nurse in the hospital during a 
spell of brain fever,” explained Isabel. 

“ Is this thing unavoidable ? ” asked Mason, in illy 
concealed apprehension. 

“ Thus we earn our dinner,” replied Roberts. “To 
what length this love of food will carry a man ! ” 

“ Well, let’s have the agony over at once.” 

The Doctor lifted his tall frame to the perpendicular 
as if pulled by a string, and, marching to the piano, 
asked Etta to accompany him. His face was expres- 
sionless, but his eyes laughed. 

His voice shook the floor with the doleful cadences 
of a distressing ballad about a man who murdered his 
wife because she was “untrew,” and was afterwards 
haunted by a “ Agger in white with pityous eyes and 


Her First Dinner Out 


207 


cries.” He eventually died of remorse and the ballad 
ended by warning all men to refrain from hasty judg- 
ments upon their wives. 

“ Amen ! So say we all ! ” Professor Roberts heartily 
agreed. A lively discussion was precipitated by Mason, 
who said : ‘‘ The man must be judged by the facts 
before him at the time the deed was done, not after- 
wards. Tve no doubt there are wives whose murder 
would be justifiable homicide.” 

Isabel interrupted it at last by saying : “ That will 
do, that is quite enough. You are on the road to 
vituperation.” 

“ Miss Dutcher, you will sing for us, won’t you ? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t sing.” Rose turned upon her in terror. 

“ Really and truly^? ” 

“ Really and truly.” 

“ Then you play ? ” 

“ I have no accomplishments at all. All the music I 
can make is a whistle and a jews’-harp, I assure you.” 

This set Roberts off. “ Ah ! La Belle Siffleuse ! we 
will hear you whistle. Dr. Sanborn, Miss Dutcher can 
whistle.” 

Rose shrank back. “ Oh, I can’t whistle before com- 
pany; I learned on the farm, I was alone so much.” 

They fell upon her in entreaties, and at last she half 
promised. 

“ If you won’t look at me ” 

“ Turn down the gas ! ” shouted Roberts. 

They made the room dim. There was a little 
silence, and then into the room crept a keen little 


ao8 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

sweet piping sound. It broadened out into a clear 
fluting and entered upon an old dance tune. As she 
went on she put more and more go into it, till Roberts 
burst out with a long-drawn nasal cry, “ Sash-ay all ! ” 
and Rose broke down promptly. Everybody shouted 
“ Bravo ! ” 

Roberts exulted. “ Oh, but Pd like to see an old- 
fashioned country dance again. Give us another old- 
fashioned tune.” 

“ I don't know that I do them right,” said Rose. 
“ I learned from hearing the fiddlers play them.” 

“ More ! more ! ” cried Roberts. “ I like those old 
things. Mason here pretends not to know them, but 
he's danced them many a time.” 

Rose whistled more of the old tunes. “ Haste to the 
Wedding,” “ Honest John,” “ Polly Perkins,” and at 
last reached some fantastic furious tunes, which she had 
caught from the Norwegians of the coolly. 

Then she stopped and they turned up the light. She 
looked a little ashamed of her performance, and Isabel 
seemed to understand it, so she said : 

“Now that is only fooling, and I'm going to ask 
Miss Butcher to read some of her verses to us. Dr. 
Thatcher writes me that she does verses excellently 
well.” This sobered the company at once, as it well 
might, and Rose was in despair. 

“ Oh, no, don't ask me to do that, please.” 

“ This is your chance, rise to it,” insisted Isabel. 

“ If you will. I'll sing my song again for you,” San- 
born said. 


Her First Dinner Out 


209 


At last Rose gave up resistance. Her heart beat so 
terribly hard she seemed about to smother, but she 
recited a blank verse poem. It was an echo of Tenny- 
son, of course, not exactly “ Enoch Arden,” but 
reminiscent of it, and the not too critical taste of Dr. 
Sanborn and Professor Roberts accepted it with 
applause. 

Mason stole a sly look at Isabel, who did not give 
up. She asked for one more, and Rose read a second 
selection, a spasmodic, equally artificial graft, a sup- 
posedly deeply emotional lyric, an echo of Mrs. Brown- 
ing, with a third line which went plumping to the deeps 
of passion after a rhyme. It had power in it, and a sort 
of sincerity in the reading which carried even Isabel away. 
For the girPs magnificent figure was a poem in itself. 

“ What a voice you have ! ” she said, as she seized 
her by the hands. “You read beautifully — and you 
write well, too.” 

Rose noticed that Mr. Mason, the large man, said 
nothing at all. In the midst of the talk the maid 
approached Isabel. 

“ Someone has called for Miss Dutcher.” Rose 
sprang up to go with a feeling that she had stayed too 
long. Every one said “ Good-by. I hope we’ll see you 
again ; ” and Isabel went with her to help her put on 
her things. 

“ My dear, you’ve pleased them all, and I’ve fallen in 
love with you. I’m going to have you at the Woman’s 
Club. You must come and see me again. Come 
often, won’t you ? ” 


210 Rose of Butchers Coolly 

“ I shall be glad to,” Rose said, simply, but her face 
was flushed and her eyes were shining with joy. 

Owen was outside in the hall alone. 

“ Didn’t Mary come too ? ” 

“ No, she concluded it would look awkward if she 
came and stood outside the door.” 

They walked along side by side. Taylor considered 
it an affectation to offer a strong young woman his arm, 
except at critical passages of the street. 

“ Did you have a good time ?” 

“ Oh splendid ! ” she said, the joy of her social success 
upon her. “It was lovely! I never met such fine people. 
Everything was so full of fun and they were intellectual, 
too. Dr. Herrick is wonderful I Mr. Mason, too.” 

“ What Mr. Mason ? ” 

“Warren Mason, I think they call him.” 

“ Is that so ? Warren Mason is considered one of 
the finest newspaper men in the city. All the fellows 
look up to him.” 

“ I’m glad I met him. Oh, now I see 1 Dr. Her- 
rick invited him there to hear me read. I made a failure, 
I’m afraid.” 

She thought so more and more as the rose-color of 
her little triumph grew gray. She ended by tossing to 
and fro on her bed, raging against her foolish action. 
The long poem was bad. It was involved and twisted 
and dull. She saw Mason’s face darken again, and it 
seemed now it was a look of disgust. 

And the whistling ! Good heavens ! was there no 
limit to her folly, her childishness ? 


Her First Dinner Out 


211 


So she writhed and groaned, her hopes all pathetically 
trampled and dust-covered now. Everybody would hear 
of her idiocy. She had been so determined to do some- 
thing worth while, and she had read her worst lines, and 
whistled — whistled like a cow-boy. 

The houses of the Lake Shore Drive seemed like 
impenetrable castles in the depth of her despair, and 
Mason’s words about the city grew each moment deeper 
in meaning. 

* * * * * * 5 |« 

After Rose left. Dr. Herrick came back into the 
room radiant. 

‘‘ There, what do you think of her ? Am I crazy or 
not ? I claim to have discovered a genius.” 

“ My dear, seems to me Thatcher has a prior claim.” 

“Well, anyhow she is a genius. Don’t you think 
so, Warren ? ” 

“ She can whistle.” 

“ Oh, don’t be so enigmatical, it is out of place. 
She’s got power. You can’t deny that.” 

“ Time enough to say what she can do when she 
finds out what polly-rot she is writing now. The 
whistling interested me,” he added, malevolently. 

Isabel’s face darkened a little. 

“ I understand this is one of your frank nights. But 
I shall not allow it to affect me. You cannot sneer 
down that beautiful girl.” 

“I’m not sneering her down. I am merely indicat- 
ing where she needs help. She is a glorious creature 
physically, and she’s keen mentally — morally, no doubt. 


212 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


she's well instructed — after the manner of country 
girls — but aesthetically she’s in a sorrowful way. 
Taste is our weak point in America, and in the rural 
regions — well there isn’t any taste above that for short- 
cake, dollar chromos, and the New York Repository.^’ 

“He’s started, he’s off!” said Roberts. “Now, I 
like the girl’s verses j they are full of dignity and fervor, 
it seems to me.” 

“Full of fever, you mean. You specialists in nerve 
diseases and spotted bugs wouldn’t know a crass imita- 
tion of Tennyson if you had it in a glass vial. It’s such 
poor creatures as you who keep these young writers imi- 
tating successes. The girl has a fine roll of voice and 
a splendid curve of bust, and that made the stuff she 
read, poetry — to impressionable persons.” 

“ Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! ” chorused the young people. 

“ Roberts, you are a sensualist,” Sanborn interposed, 
gravely. 

Mason imperturbably proceeded. 

“ The girl has power of some sort. I rather suspect it 
to be dramatic, but that’s mimetic and of a low order, 
anyway. Her primary distinction, with me, consists in 
something quite other than these. The girl has char- 
acter, and that’s saying a good deal about a woman, 
especially a girl. She has departed widely from the con- 
ventional type without losing essential womanliness.” 

“ Ah, now we are coming at it ! ” they all exclaimed, 
as they drew around him, with exaggerated expressions 
of interest. 

“The girl is darkly individual, and very attractive 


Her First Dinner Out 


213 


because of it ; but you make of her a social success, as 
I can see Isabel is planning to do, and get her wearing 
low-necked dresses and impoverishing her people, and 
you’ll take all the charm out of her.” 

“ I don’t believe it ! ” said Isabel. 

“ It hasn’t hurt Dr. Herrick,” put in Roberts. “ I 
must say I’d like to see the girl in a low-necked dress ” 
— he waved his hand to hold them in check. “ Now, 
hold on ! I know that sounds bad, but I mean it all 
right.” 

“ Oh, no doubt ! ” They laughed at his embarrassment. 

Mason interposed. “ Roberts’s long stay among the 
Wallapi and Tlinkit wigwams has perverted his naturally 
moral nature.” 

Roberts shook his hands in deprecation, but uttered no 
further protest. 

Sanborn said : “ It’s a serious thing to advise a girl like 
that. What do you intend to do, Isabel ? Is a social 
success the thing the girl needs ? ” 

“It won’t do her any harm to meet nice people — of 
course, she ought not to go out too much if she’s going 
to write.” 

“ You amuse me,” Mason began again, in his meas- 
ured way. “ First because you assume that the girl can 
go where she pleases ” 

“ She can, too, if she has the quality we think she has. 
Chicago society isn’t the New York Four Hundred. 
We’re all workers out here.” 

“Workers and thieves,” Mason went on; “but if 
the girl has the quality I think she has, she will map 


214 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


out her own career and follow it irresistibly. The ques- 
tion that interests me is this — how did the girl get 
here? Why didn’t she stay on the farm like Susan, 
and Sally, and Ed, and Joe ? How did she get through 
college without marrying Harry or Tommy ? These 
are the vital questions.” 

“ I don’t know,” replied Isabel. ‘‘ I thought of those 
things, but of course I couldn’t ask her on first ac- 
quaintance.” 

Mason lifted his eyebrows. “ Ah ! You drew the 
line at love and marriage. Most women ” 

Isabel resented this. 

“ I’m not ‘ most women ’ — I’m not even a type. 
Don’t lecture me, please.” 

“ I beg your pardon, Isabel ; you’re quite right.” His 
tone was sincere, and restored peace. “ I always except 
you in any generalization.” 

“This is the most significant thing of all,” Isabel 
said, finally. “ The girl has set us talking of her as if 
she were a personage, instead of a girl from a Wisconsin 
valley ” 

“ That’s true,” Mason admitted. “ She’s of the 
countless unknown hundreds of the brightest minds 
from the country, streaming into the city side by side 
with the most vicious and licentious loafers of the town. 

“It leaves the country dull, but moral. The end is not 
yet. In the end the dull and moral people survey the 
ruined walls of the bright and vicious cities.” 

“And the dull and the moral are prolific,” Sanborn 
put in. 


Her First Dinner Out 215 

“ Precisely, and they can eat and sleep, which gives 
them vast stomachs and long life.’’ 

Roberts sprang up. “ I propose to escape while I can. 
Mason is wound up for all night.” 

There was a little bustle of parting, and eventually 
Sanborn and Mason walked olF together. 

“ It’s no time to go to sleep. Come to my room and 
smoke a pipe,” suggested Mason. “ I’m in a mood to 
talk if you’re in a mood to listen.” 

Sanborn was a modest fellow, who admired his friend. 
“ I am always ready to listen to you,” he said. 

Probably that is your amiable weakness.” Mason 
dryly responded. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


MASON TALKS ON MARRIAGE 

Men are not easily intimate. They confide in each 
other rather seldom. Of love and marriage coarse men 
speak with sneers and obscene jests, while serious men 
express themselves in hints, with apologetic smiles, as if 
they were betraying a weakness, seldom going to any 
length of direct statement. 

Sanborn had known Mason for some years. They 
were both from the country ; Mason from a small inte- 
rior town in Illinois, Sanborn from Indiana. Mason 
was an older man than Sanborn, and generally presumed 
upon it ; also upon Sanborn’s reticence. 

They rode up the elevator in the Berkeley flats in 
silence, and in silence they removed their coats and filled 
their pipes, and took seats before the fire. Mason was 
accustomed to say he supported two rooms and an open 
grate fire, and he regretted it was not cold enough to 
have the grate lighted for that evening. 

They sat some minutes in smoke. Mason, sitting 
low in his chair, with his face in repose, looked old and 
tired, and Sanborn was moved to say: 

“ Mason, I’m going to ask you a plump ques- 
216 


Mason Talks on Marriage 217 

tion : Why don’t you get married ? You’re getting 
old.” 

“ I’ve tried to.” 

“ What ! tried to ? ” 

“ Exactly.” 

“ That is incredible ! ” 

“ It is the fact,” replied the older man, placidly. 

Sanborn did not believe it. He knew Mason to be 
somewhat seclusive in his life, but he also knew the high 
place he held in the eyes of several women. 

Mason went on, finally, in his best manner, as San- 
born called it. 

‘‘For ten years I’ve been trying to marry, and I’ve 
been conscientious and thorough in my search, too.” 

Sanborn was violently interested. He drew a long 
breath of smoke. 

“ What seems to be the matter ? ” 

“Don’t hurry me. For one thing, I suppose. I’ve 
gone too far in my knowledge of women. I’ve gone 
beyond the capability of being bamboozled. I see too 
much of the ropes and props that do sustain the paste- 
board rose-tree.” 

“ That is flat blasphemy,” put in Sanborn. “ I know 
more about women than you do, and ” 

“I don’t mean to say that women deceive in a base 
way — often they are not intentionally deceptive; but 
hereditarily transmitted, necessarily defensive wiles lead 
them to turn their best side toward men. Before I was 
thirty I could still call upon a young woman without 
observing that she received me in a room shadowed to 


2i8 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

conceal her crows-feet. The pre-arranged position of 
the chairs and color of the lamp-shade did not trouble 
me. 

He seemed to pause over some specific case. “ And 
once I believed a girl wore a patch on her chin to con- 
ceal a sore. Now I know she does it to locate a dim- 
ple. I know perfectly well what any young woman 
would do if I called upon her to-morrow. She would 
take a seat so that the softest shadows would fall over 
her face. If she had good teeth she would smile often. 
If her teeth were poor she would be grave. If her arms 
were fair her sleeves would be loose, if they were thin 
she’d wear ruffles. If she had a fine bosom her dress 
would be open a little at the neck ” 

“ Oh, look here. Mason ! ” Sanborn interrupted, “ I 
can’t listen to such calumny without protest.” 

“ I don’t mean to say that all this would be con- 
scious. As a matter of fact it is generally innocent and 
unintentional. A woman does not deliberately say : ‘ I 
have a dimple, therefore I will smile.’ She inherited 
the dimples and the smile from a long line of coquettes. 
Women are painfully alike from generation to genera- 
tion. It’s all moonshine and misty sky about their in- 
finite variety.” 

“ Suppose I grant that — who’s to blame ? mind you 
I don’t grant it — but suppose I do, for argument.” 

“You are a lover and a fortunate man. You have 
in Isabel a woman of character. Mark you ! These 
wiles and seductions on the part of women were forced 
upon them. I admit that they have been forced to use 


Mason Talks on Marriage 219 

them in defence for a million years. Had they been 
our physical superiors unquestionably the lying graces 
would have been ours. At the same time it doesn’t 
help me. I can’t trust such past-masters in deceit, 
albeit they deceive me to my good.” 

“ Are we not deceptive also ? It seems to me the 
same indictment would hold regarding men.” 

Undoubtedly — but we are not now under indict- 
ment. You asked me a question — I am answering it.” 
This silenced Sanborn effectually. Mason refilled his 
pipe and then resumed : 

“ Again I can’t seem to retain a vital interest in any 
given case — that is to say, an exclusive interest.” 

“ That is a relic of polygamy,” Sanborn said. “ I 
imagine we all have moments when we feel that old in- 
stinct tumbling around in our blood.” 

“ I meet a woman to-day who seems to possess that 
glamour which the romantic poets and high-falutin 
novelists tell us the woman of our choice must have. 
I go home exulting — at last I am to reach the mystic 
happiness marriage is supposed to bring. But to- 
morrow I meet her and the glamour is faded. I go 
again and again, every spark of electric aureole vanishes ; 
we get to be good friends, maybe — nothing more.” 

“ Perhaps a friendship like that is the best plane for a 
marriage. Isabel and I have never pretended to any 
school-boy or school-girl sentiment.” 

Mason replied in such wise Sanborn did not know 
whether to think him bitterly in earnest or only lightly 
derisive. 


220 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

“ That would overturn all the sentiment and love- 
lore of a thousand years. It would make every poet 
from Sappho down to Swinburne a pretender or a mad- 
man. Such ideas are supreme treason to all the in- 
spired idiots of poetry. No ! glamour we must have.” 

Sanborn smiled broadly, but Mason did not see him. 

“ So I say, marry young or marry on the impulse, or 
you’ll come at last to my condition, when no head 
wears an aureole.” 

“I wonder what started you off on this trail. 
Mason ? ” 

Mason pushed on resolutely : 

“ I have become interested and analytical in the mat- 
ter. I follow up each case and catalogue it away. 
This failure due to a distressing giggle; that to an 
empty skull ; this to a bad complexion ; that to a too- 
ready sentiment. If I could marry while the glamour 
lasts ! I admit I have met many women whose first 
appeal filled me with hope; if I might contrive to 
marry then it might be done once for all. That, of 
course, is impossible, because no woman, I am forced to 
admit, would discover any seductive glamour in a taffy- 
colored blonde like me. My glamour comes out upon 
intimate acquaintance.” 

“ Perhaps the glamour needed could be developed on 
closer acquaintance with women who seem plain at first 
sight.” 

“Possibly ! But I can’t go about developing glamour 
in strange, plain women. They might not understand 
my motives.” 


Mason Talks on Marriage 221 

Sanborn laughed, dismally. 

“ Then the case seems to me hopeless.” 

“Precisely. The case seems hopeless. After ten 
years’ careful study of the matter I have come to the 
conclusion that I was born to something besides matri- 
mony. Cases of glamour get less and less common 
now, and I foresee the time when the most beautiful 
creature in the world will possess no glamour.” 

Sanborn imaginatively entered into this gloomy mood. 
“ Nothing will then remain but death.” 

“Exactly! Peaceful old age and decay. But there 
are deeper deeps to this marriage question, as I warn you 
now on the eve of your venture. I find in myself a 
growing inability to conceive of one woman in the light 
of an exclusive ideal, an ideal of more interest than all 
the world of women. I am troubled by the ‘ possible 
woman.’ ” 

“ I don’t quite conceive ” 

“ I mean the woman who might, quite possibly, 
appeal to me in a more powerful and beautiful way than 
the one I have. I am not prepared as I approach the 
point to say I will love and cherish till death. In 
the unknown deeps of life there are other women, more 
alluring, more beautiful still. So I must refuse to make 
a promise which I am not sure I can keep.” 

“ Isabel and I have agreed to leave that out of our 
ceremony,” said Sanborn ; “ also the clause which 

demands obedience from her.” 

“ I am watching you. If your experiment succeeds, 
and I can find a woman as fine and sensible and self- 


222 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 


reliant — but there again my confounded altruism comes 
in. I think also of the woman. Ought I to break into 
the orderly progress of any woman’s life ? I can’t 
afford to throw myself away, I can’t afford to place a 
barrier between me and the ‘ possible woman,’ and per 
contra, neither can the woman afford to make a mis- 
take; it bears harder upon women than it does upon 
men. When the glorious ‘ possible woman ’ comes 
along I want to be free. So the woman might reason- 
ably want to be free when the ideal man comes along.” 

“‘If you really love, these considerations would not 
count.” 

Mason waved a silencing palm. 

“ That will do. I’ve heard those wise words before. 
I am ready to be submerged in such excluding emotions.” 

“ Mason,” said Sanborn, “ one of two things I must 
believe : Either that you have fallen in love with that 
superb country girl to-night or you’ve been giving me 
a chapter from your new novel.” 

Mason looked around with a mystic gleam in his 
eyes. 

“ Well, which is it ? ” 


CHAPTER XIX 


ROSE SITS IN THE BLAZE OF A THOUSAND EYES 

Life quickened for the coolly girl. She accom- 
modated herself to the pace of the daily papers with 
amazing facility. She studied the amusement columns, 
and read the book reviews, and frequented the beautiful 
reading-room of the Newberry Library. She went to 
all the matinees, taking gallery tickets, of course, ever 
mindful of her slender resources — studying as truly, as 
intently, as if she were still at college. 

She had written her father to say that three hundred 
dollars would carry her through till June, and she was 
determined it should do so. She had not begun to 
think of any work to do beyond her writing. Her mind 
was still in unrest — life’s problem was seemingly more 
difficult of solution than ever. 

She took hold upon the city with the power of a fresh 
mind capable of enormous feeling and digesting. She 
seemed to be in the world at last, plunged in it, envel- 
oped by it, and she came to delight in the roar and 
tumult of it all, as if it were the sound of winds and 
waters ; and each day she entered upon a little wider 
circle of adventure. Once the first confusion was past, 
223 


224 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

the movement and faces of the crowds were of endless 
interest to her. She walked down into the city every 
day, returning to her little nook in the noisy flat build- 
ing, as the young eagle to its eerie above the lashing 
tree-tops. She was sitting above the tumult, as Mr. 
Mason had advised her to do. 

She came soon to know that the west side of State 
Street was tabooed by wealthy shoppers, who bought 
only on the east side; that Wabash Avenue was yet 
more select, and that no one who owned a carriage ever 
traded in the bargain stores. She did all her shopping 
there because it was cheaper, but deep in her heart she 
felt no kinship with the cross, hurrying, pushing, per- 
spiring crowds at the bargain counters. Her place was 
among the graceful, leisurely, beautifully attired groups 
of people on the east side of State Street. She was not 
troubled at this stage of her development by any idea of 
being faithful to the people of her own material condi- 
tion and origin. She had always loved the graces of 
life, and her father was a man of innate refinement. 
The idea of caste, of arbitrary classes of people, had 
only come to her newly or obscurely through news- 
papers or novels. She did not like dirty people, nor 
surly people, nor boorish people. In fact, she did not 
class people at all ; they were individuals with her yet. 
She was allured by the conditions of life on the Lake 
Shore Drive because the people lived such quiet, clean, 
and joyous lives apparently, with time to think and be 
kind. 

She met few people outside of the circle at the boarding- 


In the Blaze of a Thousand Eyes 225 

house, and an occasional visiting friend of Miss Fletcher 
or Mr. Taylor. Owen she saw much of, and he pleased 
her greatly. He was a man she could have married un- 
der other circumstances. He had means to live a schol- 
arly unhurried life and was an unusual character, almost 
elemental in his simple sincerity, but she considered him 
committed to Mary, and, besides. Mason had become a 
deterring cause, though she hardly realized that. 

Through all the days which followed that evening at 
Dr. Herrick’s she saw Mason’s face with growing dis- 
tinctness. It was not a genial face, but it was one to 
remember, a face of power. The line of the lips, the 
half-averted chin, the eyes, expressed disgust or weari- 
ness. He was the most powerful man she had ever 
known, a man of critical insight, and for that reason 
especially she had sought in her last reading to please 
him. She had failed, and so she was afraid to see him 
again. When Isabel said to her : 

“ Mason is a man you should know. He can do a 
great deal for you in the city,” Rose replied, in her 
blunt fashion : 

“ I don’t want him to do anything for me.” 

‘‘ Oh, yes, you do ! He’s really a kind-hearted man. 
He puts on a manner which scares people sometimes, 
but he’s a man of the highest character. He’s the 
greatest thinker I ever met — Oh, I’m not disloyal to 
Dr. Sanborn, he’s the best man I ever met.” There 
was a story in that tender inflection. “So you must let 
me send in something to Warren, and let him advise 


226 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

Rose finally consented, but it seemed to her like lay- 
ing an only child upon the rack. She had come almost 
to fear, certainly to dread, that strange, imperturbable 
man. His abiding-place and his office were alike so far 
removed from any manner of living she had knowledge 
of, and he concealed his own likes and dislikes so effect- 
ually that not even Isabel (as she confessed) could learn 
them. 

A few days after putting her packet of poems into 
Isabel’s hands Rose received a note from her to come 
over and see her — that she had an invitation for her. 

“We are invited, you and Dr. Sanborn and I, to sit 
in a box at the symphony concert Saturday night, with 
Mr. and Mrs. Harvey. Mrs. Harvey is one of my dearest 
friends, and I’ve talked about you so much she is eager 
to see you.” 

Rose took the matter very quietly. She was mightily 
pleased, but she was not accustomed to gushing her 
thanks ; besides, she had recovered her equilibrium. 

Isabel was a little surprised at her coolness, but was 
keen enough to see that Rose did not mean to be un- 
grateful. 

“ I thought perhaps you’d like to advise about dress,” 
she said. “ The boxes are very brilliant, but you’ll 
look well in anything. You won’t need a bonnet, your 
hair is so pretty, and that little gray dress will do, with 
a little change.” 

“You know I’m a farmer’s daughter,” Rose ex- 
plained ; “ I can’t afford new dresses in order to go to 
the opera.” 


In the Blaze of a Thousand Eyes 227 

“ I understand, my dear. I have my own limita- 
tions in that way. I keep one or two nice gowns and 
the rest of the time I wear a uniform. I told Mrs. 
Harvey you were poor like myself, and that weM need 
to be the background for her, and she said she’d trust 
me. 

(What Mrs. Harvey had said was this: “My dear 
Isabel, you’ve got judgment, and if you say the girl’s 
worth knowing I want to know her. And if you say 
the girl will be presentable I’d like to have her come. 
The boys are both in New York, anyway, and we’ve 
got three unoccupied seats.”) 

“ Now you come over to dinner with me Saturday ; 
come at five. I want you to help me dress. Doctor 
will be over, and we’ll have a nice time before the 
carriage comes.” 

Rose was much more elated than she cared to show. 
Once as she sat in the gallery of the theatre and looked 
at the boxes she had shut her teeth in a vow : “ I’ll sit 
there where you do, one of these days ! ” and now it 
had come in a few weeks instead of years — like a fairy 
gift. She told Mary nothing about her invitation for 
several days. She dreaded her outcry, which was in- 
escapable. 

“ Oh ! isn’t that fine ! How you do get ahead — 
what will you wear ? ” 

“ I haven’t a bewildering choice,” Rose said. “ I 
thought I’d wear my gray dress.” 

“ Oh, this is a wonderful chance for you ! Can’t 
you afford a new dress ? ” 


228 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


“ No, I’m afraid not. There isn’t time now, any- 
way. I’ll keep close to the wall. Fortunately I have 
a new cloak that will do.” 

“Well, that gray dress is lovely — when it’s on 
you.” 

Rose hated the bother about the dress. 

“ I wish I could wear a dress suit like a man,” she 
said to Isabel when they were in the midst of the final 
stress of it. 

“ So do I, but we can’t. There’s a law against it, I 
believe. Now I’m going to dress your hair for you. 
That is, I’m going to superintend it, and Etta’s deft 
little fingers shall do the work.” 

After dinner, Isabel ordered things cleared and said to 
Sanborn : 

“Doctor, you go and smoke while we put on our 
frills.” 

Sanborn acquiesced readily enough. 

“ Very well — if you find me gone when you come 
forth, don’t worry. I’ve gone ahead with my friend 
Yerkes. Your carriage will be full, anyhow.” 

“All right.” She went over and gave him a hug. 
“ You’re a good, obedient boy — that’s what you are ! ” 

He spoke (with his chin over her wrist) addressing 
Rose : 

“The study of chemicals and nerve-tissues has not 
left us utterly desolate, you perceive.” 

When they were in their dressing-room. Rose asked 
what the Doctor meant by that speech. 

Isabel laughed and colored a little. 


In the Blaze of a Thousand Eyes 229 

‘‘ Oh, he meant that a study of bones and muscles 
and diseased bodies had not made us prosaic and — and 
old. I think it has made me still more in love with 
healthy human flesh — but never mind that now ; we 
must hurry.” 

Rose looked at Isabel in silent worship as she stood 
before her ready for the carriage. Her ordinarily cold 
little face glowed with color, and her eyes were full of 
mirthful gleams like a child’s. It seemed impossible 
that she had written a treatise on “ Nervous Diseases,” 
and was ranked among the best alienists in the city. 

Etta made no secret of her adoration. She fairly 
bowed down before her sister and before Rose also. 
She was so little and so commonplace before these 
beings of light. 

Down at the carriage it was too dark to see anyone 
distinctly, but Rose liked the cordial, hearty voice of 
Mrs. Harvey. Mr. Harvey’s hand was small and firm, 
Mrs. Harvey’s plump and warm. Mr. Harvey spoke 
only once or twice during the ride. 

As the carriage rumbled and rolled southward at a 
swift pace. Rose kept watch out of the window. The 
street had not lost a particle of its power over her. 

As they plunged deeper into the city, and the roll of 
other carriages thickened around them, the importance 
of this event grew upon Rose. She was bewildered 
when they alighted, but concealed it by impassivity, as 
usual. The carriages stood in long rows waiting to 
unload. Others were rolling swiftly away ; doors 
slammed ; voices called, “ All right ! ” A mighty 


230 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 


stream of people was entering the vast arched entrance, 
with rustle of garments and low murmur of laughing 
comment. Rose caught the flash of beautiful eyes and 
the elusive gleam of jewels on every side, as the ladies 
bowed to their acquaintances. 

Everything was massive, and spacious, and enduring. 
The entrance way was magnificent, and Rose followed 
Mr. Harvey as if in a dream. They took a mysteri- 
ous short cut somewhere, and came out into a nar- 
row balcony, which was divided into stalls. Through 
arched openings Rose caught glimpses of the mighty 
hall, immense as a mountain-cave, and radiant as a 
flower. 

As they moved along, Mrs. Harvey turned to Isabel. 

“ She’ll do ; don’t worry ! ” 

At their box Mr. Harvey paused and said, with a 
pleasant smile : 

“ Here we are.” 

Dr. Sanborn met them, and there was the usual bustle 
in getting settled. 

‘‘You sit here, my dear,” said Mrs. Harvey. She 
was a plump, plain, pleasant-voiced person, and put 
Rose at ease at once. She gave Rose the outside seat, 
and before she realized it the coolly girl was seated in 
plain view of a thousand people, under a soft but pene- 
trating light. 

She shrank like some nocturnal insect suddenly brought 
into sunlight. She turned white, and then the blood 
flamed to her face and neck. She sprang up. 

“ Oh, Mrs. Harvey, I can’t sit here,” she gasped out. 


In the Blaze of a Thousand Eyes 231 

“You must! — that is the place for you,” said Mrs. 
Harvey. “ Do you suppose an old housewife like me 
would occupy a front seat with such a beauty in the 
background ? Not a bit of it I The public welfare de- 
mands that you sit there.” She smiled into the scared 
girl’s face with kindly humor. 

Isabel leaned over and whispered : “ Sit there ; you’re 
magnificent.” 

Rose sank back into her seat, and stared straight 
ahead. She felt as if something hot and withering were 
blowing on that side of her face which was exposed to 
the audience. She wished she had not allowed the neck 
of her dress to be lowered an inch. She vowed never 
again to get into such a trap. 

Mr. Harvey talked to her from behind her chair. He 
was very kind and thoughtful, and said just enough to 
let her feel his presence, and not enough to weary her. 

Gradually the beauty and grandeur of the scene robbed 
her of her absurd self-consciousness. She did not need 
to be told that this was the heart and brain of Chicago. 
This was the Chicago she had dreamed about. A per- 
fumed rustling rose from below her. Around her the 
boxes filled with girls in gowns of pink, and rose, and 
blue, and faint green. Human flowers they seemed, dewed 
with diamonds. All about was the movement of orderly, 
leisurely, happy-toned, and dignified men and women. 
All was health, pleasure, sanity, kindliness. Wealth 
here displayed its wondrous charm, its peace, its poetry. 

Her romantic conception of these people did them an 
injustice. She clothed them with the attributes of the 


232 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

men and women of English society novels and they 
became mysterious and haughty to her. This Mr. 
Harvey did not know, but he helped her to rectify her 
mistaken estimate of the people around her by saying : 

“We business men can't get out to the Friday re- 
hearsals, but Saturday night finds us ready to enjoy an 
evening of art." 

He looked very handsome in evening dress, and his 
face was very pleasant to see, yet Isabel had told her 
that not only was he a hard-working business man, but 
a man of wide interests, a great railway director, in fact. 

“ I suppose you know many of the people here," she 
said at last. 

“ Oh, yes," he replied, “ I know most of them. 
Chicago is large, but some way we still keep track of 
each other." 

As he talked, she gained courage to raise her eyes to 
the roof, soaring far up above, glowing with color. 
Balcony after balcony circled at the back, and she 
thought with a little flush that perhaps Owen and Mary 
were sitting up in one of those balconies and could see 
her in the box. 

The hall was buff and light-blue to her eyes, and the 
procession of figures over the arch, the immense stage, 
the ceiling, the lights, all were of great beauty and 
interest. 

But the people! the beautiful dresses I the dainty 
bonnets ! the flow of perfumed drapery I the movement 
of strong, clean, supple limbs I — these were most glo- 
rious of all to her. She had no room for envy in her 


In the Blaze of a Thousand Eyes 233 

heart. She was very happy, for she seemed to have 
attained a share in the city’s ultimate magnificence. 

She longed for gowns and bonnets like these, but 
there was no bitterness in her longing. 

She herself was a beautiful picture as she sat there. 
From her bust, proud and maternal, rose her strong 
smooth neck, and young, graceful, reflective head. If 
the head had been held high she would have seemed 
arrogant; with that reflective, forward droop, she pro- 
duced upon the gazer an effect both sweet and sad. In 
the proud bust was prophecy of matronly beauty, and 
much of the freshness of youth. 

Mason, seated below among a group of musical critics, 
looked at her with brooding eyes. At that moment she 
seemed to be the woman he had long sought. Certainly 
the glamour was around her then. She sat above him, 
and her brown hair and rich coloring stood out from the 
drapery like a painting. A chill came over him as he 
thought of the letter he had sent to her that very morn- 
ing. It was brutal; he could see that now. He might 
have put the criticism in softer phrases. 

Isabel leaned over and spoke to Rose and then Rose 
began searching for him. He was amazed to experience 
a thrill of excitement as he saw that strong, dark face 
turned toward him ; and when his eyes met hers he 
started a little, as if a ray of light had fallen suddenly 
upon him. She colored a little, he thought, and bowed. 
Where did the girl acquire that regal, indifferent in- 
clination of the head ? It was like a princess drop- 
ping a favor to a faithful subject, but it pleased him. 


234 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

“ The girl has imagination ! ” he said. “ She claims her 
own.” 

Then he meditated : “ What an absurdity ! Why 
should I fix upon that girl, when here, all about me, are 
other women more beautiful, and rich and accomplished 
besides ? That confounded farmer’s girl has a raft of 
stupid and vulgar relatives, no doubt, and her refinement 
is a mere appearance.” 

He solaced himself with a general reflection. 

“ Furthermore, why should any man select any woman, 
when they are all dots and dashes in a web of human life, 
anyhow ? Their differences are about like the imper- 
ceptible differences of a flock of wrens. Why not go 
out and marry the first one that offers, and so end 
it all ? ” 

The mystery of human genius came also to Rose as 
Mr. Harvey pointed out to her the city’s most noted 
men and women. They were mere dabs of color — 
sober color, for the most part — upon this flood of hu- 
mankind. She was to Mason, probably, only a neutral 
spot in the glorious band of color, which swept, in a 
graceful curve, back from the footlights. It was won- 
derful to her, also, to think that these smiling men were 
the millionaire directors of vast interests — they seemed 
without a care in the world. 

At last the stage chairs were completely filled by a 
crowd of twanging, booming, sawing, squeaking instru- 
mentalists. At last the leader, a large man of military 
erectness, came down to the leader’s desk and bowed, 
amidst thunderous applause. Then rapping sharply with 


In the Blaze of a Thousand Eyes 235 

his baton he brought orderly silence out of the tumult, 
and the concert began. 

The music did not mean much to Rose during the 
first half hour, for the splendor of the whole spec- 
tacle dominated the appeal of the instruments. Such 
music and such audiences were possible only in the 
largest cities, and that consideration moved her deeply. 
It seemed too good to be true that she was sitting here 
securely, ready to enjoy all that came. It had come to 
her, too, almost without effort, almost without deserving, 
she humbly acknowledged that. But there came at last 
a number on the programme which dimmed the splendor 
of the spectacle. The voice of Wagner came to her 
for the first time, and shook her and thrilled her and 
lifted her into wonderful regions where the green trees 
dripped golden moss, and the grasses were jewelled in 
very truth. Wistful young voices rose above the lazy 
lap of waves, sad with love and burdened with beauty 
which destroyed. Like a deep-purple cloud death came, 
slowly, resistlessly, closing down on those who sang, 
clasped in each other’s arms. 

They lay dead at last, and up through the hovering 
cloud their spirits soared like gold and silver flame, 
woven together, and the harsh thunder of the gray sea 
died to a sullen boom. 

When she rose to her feet the girl from the coolly 
staggered, and the brilliant, moving, murmuring house 
blurred into fluid color like a wheel of roses. 

• The real world was gone, the world of imagined 


2j6 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

things lay all about her. She felt the power to reach 
out her hand to take fame and fortune. 

In that one reeling instant the life of the little coolly, 
the lonely, gentle old father, and the days of her youth 
— all her past — were pushed into immeasurable dis- 
tance. The pulling of weeds in the corn, the driving 
of cattle to pasture were as the doings of ants in a dirt- 
heap. 

A vast pity for herself sprang up in her brain. She 
wanted to do some gigantic thing which should enrich 
the human race. She felt the power to do this, too, 
and there was a wonderful look on her face as she 
turned to Isabel. She seemed to be listening to some 
inner sound throbbing away into silence, and then her 
comprehension of things at hand came slowly back to 
her, and Isabel was speaking to her. 

“ Here’s Mr. Mason coming to speak to us,” inter- 
rupted Mr. Harvey. 

She turned to watch him as he came along the aisle 
behind the boxes ; her head still throbbed with the dying 
pulsations of the music. Everybody seemed to know 
Mason and greeted him with cordial readiness of hand. 
He came along easily, his handsome blond face showing 
little more expression at meeting her than the others, 
yet when he saw her rapt and flushed face he was 
touched. 

“ I came to see how Miss Butcher was enjoying the 
concert.” 

Rose felt a sudden disgust with her name ; it sounded 
vulgarly of the world of weeds and cattle. 


In the Blaze of a Thousand Eyes 237 

In some way she found herself a few moments later 
walking out through the iron gate into the throng of 
promenaders back of the seats. It was the most splen- 
did moment of her life. She forgot her fear of Mason 
in the excitement of the moment. She walked with 
hands clenched tightly and head lifted. The look in 
her eyes, and the burning color in her face made scores 
of people turn to study her. 

Mason perceived but misinterpreted her excitement. 
He mistook her entire self-forgetfulness for a sort of 
vain personal exultation or rapture of social success. 

She saw only dimly the mighty pillars, the massive 
arches, lit by stars of flame. She felt the carpet under 
her feet only as a grateful thing which hushed the sound 
of feet. 

They made one circuit with the promenaders. Mason 
bowing right and left, and talking disjointedly upon 
indifferent subjects. He felt the tormenting interest of 
his friends in Rose, and drew her out of the crowd. 

‘‘Let us stand here and see them go by,” he said. 
“ You liked the music, did you ? ” 

His commonplace question fell upon her like the 
scream of a peacock amid songs of thrushes. She com- 
prehended by a flash of reasoning of which he could not 
know, that it was possible to be ennuied with glorious 
harmonies. Her thought was, “ Shall I, too, sometimes 
wish to talk commonplaces in the midst of such 
glories ? ” 

“ Oh, it was beyond words ! ” she said. And then 
Mason was silent for a little space. He had divined 


238 


Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly 


her mood at last, but he had something to say which 
should be said before she returned to her box. 

He began at once : 

“ Let me say, Miss Dutcher, that while the main 
criticism of your work, which I made in my note this 
morning, must hold, still I feel the phraseology could 
have been much more amiable. The fact is I was 
irritated over other matters, and that irritation unde- 
signedly crept into my note to you.” 

“ I haven’t received it,” she said, looking directly at 
him for the first time. 

“Well then, don’t read it. I will tell you what I 
think you ought to do.” 

“ Oh, don’t talk of it,” she said and her voice was 
tense with feeling. “All I have written is trash ! I 
can see that now. It was all somebody else’s thought. 
Don’t let’s talk of that now.” 

He looked down at her face, luminous, quivering 
with excitement — and understood. 

“ I forgot,” he said, gently, “ that this was your first 
concert at the Auditorium. It is beautiful and splen- 
did, even to me. I like to come here and forget that 
work or care exists in the world. I shall enjoy it all 
the more deeply now by reason of your enthusiasm.” 

In the wide space back of the seats a great throng of 
young people were promenading to the left, round and 
round the massive pillars, in leisurely rustling swing, 
the men mainly in evening dress, the ladies in soft lumi- 
nous colors ; the heavy carpet beneath their feet gave out 
no sound, and only the throb of laughter, the murmur 


In the Blaze of a Thousand Eyes 239 

of speech, and the soft whisper of drapery was to be 
heard. 

It was all glorious beyond words, to the imaginative 
country girl. It flooded her with color, beauty, youth, 
poetry, music. Every gleaming neck or flashing eye, 
every lithe young body, every lover’s deferential droop 
of head, every woman’s worshipful upturned glance, 
came to her with power to arouse and transform. The 
like of this she had not dreamed of seeing. 

Nobody had told her of this Chicago. Nobody could 
tell her of it, indeed, for no one else saw it as she did. 
When Mason spoke again his voice was very low and 
gentle. He began to comprehend the soul of the girl. 

“ I’ve no business to advise you. I’ve come to the 
conclusion that advice well followed is ruinous. Genius 
seldom takes advice, and nobody else is worth advising. 
I took advice and went into a newspaper office twenty 
years ago. I’ve been trying ever since to rectify my 
mistake. I would be a literary man if I were not 
forced to be a newspaper man, just when my powers 
are freshest. I want to write of to-day. I want to deal 
with the city and its life, but I am forced to advise 
people upon the tariff. I come home at night worn 
out, and the work I do then is only a poor starveling. 
Now, see this audience to-night ! There are themes for 
you. See these lovers walking before and behind us. 
He may be a clerk in a bank; she the banker’s daughter. 
That man Harvey, in whose box you sit to-night, was a 
farmer’s boy, and his wife the daughter of a Methodist 
preacher in a cross-roads town. How did they get 


240 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 


where they are, rich, influential, kindly, polished in 
manner ? What an epic ! ” 

“ Are you advising me now ? ” she asked, with a 
smile. 

Her penetration delighted him. 

“Yes, I am saying now in another way the things I 
wrote. I hope. Miss Butcher, you will burn that packet 
without reading. I would not write it at all now.” 

They were facing each other a little out of the stream 
of people. She looked into his face with a bright smile, 
though her eyes were timorous. 

“ Do you mean manuscript and all ? ” 

His face was kind, but he answered, firmly: 

“Yes, burn it all. Will you do it?” 

“ If you mean it.” 

“ I mean it. You’re too strong and young and cre- 
ative to imitate anybody. Burn it, and all like it. 
Start anew to-night.” 

His voice compelled her to a swift resolution. 

“ I will do it.” 

He held out his hand with a sudden gesture, and she 
took it. His eyes and the clasp of his hand made her 
shudder and grow cold, with some swift, ominous fore- 
knowledge of distant toil and sorrow and joy. 

The lights were dimmed mysteriously, and Mason 
said : 

“They are ready to begin again ; we had better return.” 

He led her back to the box, and Mrs. Harvey flashed 
a significant look upon him, and said, in a theatrical 
aside : 


In the Blaze of a Thousand Eyes 241 


“ Aha ! at last.” 

Isabel said : 

“ Come and see us to-morrow at six — a ‘ powwow.’ ” 

The music which came after could not hold Rose’s 
attention. How could it, in the face of the tremendous 
changes which were in progress in her brain? What 
had she done? To an almost perfect stranger she had 
promised to burn all the work of her pen thus far. 

And an hour before she had almost hated, certainly 
she had feared, that man. While the music wailed 
and clashed, she sat rigidly still, longing to cry out, to 
sing, and to weep. Without saying so to anyone, she 
had finally settled upon one great ambition which was to 
write, to be a great poetess. After vicissitudes and false 
enthusiasm she had come back to her first aspiration 
which she had confessed to Dr. Thatcher years before, 
in the little coolly school-house. And now, at the bid- 
ding of a stranger, she had made a promise to burn her 
work and start again ! 

But had not the music and the splendid spectacle 
before her almost determined her before he had spoken ? 

She returned again and again to the wondrous gentle- 
ness which was in his voice, to the amazing tenderness 
which was in his eyes. The man who had held her 
hand that moment was not the worn, cynical man she 
had feared. He was younger and handsomer, too. She 
shuddered again, with some powerful emotion at the 
thought of his calm, compelling, down-thrusting glance 
into her eyes. His mind appeared to her to have a 
shoreless sweep. 


242 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

The music rose to a pounding, blaring climax, and 
the audience, applauding, rose, breaking into streams 
and pools and whirling masses of color. 

“ Well, my dear, how have you enjoyed the even- 
ing ? ” asked Mrs. Harvey, cordially. 

“Very much, indeed. I never can thank you enough.” 

“ It has been a pleasure to feel your enthusiasm. It 
makes us all young again. I’ve asked Dr. Herrick to 
bring you to see us ; I hope you will come.” 

The hearty clasp of her hand moved the motherless 
girl deeply, and her voice trembled with emotion as she 
replied : 

“ It will be a great pleasure to me, Mrs. Harvey.” 

Mrs. Harvey clutched her in her arms and kissed 
her. 

“ You splendid girl ! I wish you were mine,” she 
said, and thereafter Rose felt no fear in her presence. 

“ I don’t care whether she’s a genius or not,” Mrs. 
Harvey said to Isabel, as they walked out to the carriage. 
“She’s a good girl, and I like her, and I’ll help her. 
You figure out anything I can properly do and I’ll do it. 

I don’t know another girl who could have carried off 
that cheap little dress the way she did. She made it 
look like a work of art. She’s a wonder ! Think of 
her coming from a Wisconsin farm ! ” 

Isabel rejoiced. 

“ I knew you’d like her.” She leaned over and said, 
in a low voice : “ I’d like Elbert to see her.” 

Mrs. Harvey turned a quick eye upon her. 

“Well, if you aren’t a matchmaker ! ” 


In the Blaze of a Thousand Eyes 243 

As they came out in the throng it seemed as if every- 
body knew the Harveys and Isabel. Out in the street 
the cabs had gathered, like huge beetles, standing in 
patient rows in the gaslight. 

The bellowing of numbers, the slam of carriage-doors, 
the grind of wheels, the shouts of drivers, made a pan- 
demonium to Rose, but Mr. Harvey, with the same gentle 
smile on his face, presented his ticket to the gigantic 
negro, who roared enormously : 

“ Ninety-two ! Ninety-two ! ” 

“ Here we are ! ” Mr. Harvey called, finally, and handed 
the women in with the same unhurried action, and the 
homeward ride began. There was little chance for talk, 
though Mrs. Harvey did talk. 

Rose sat in silence. This had been another moment 
of sudden growth. She was still conscious of great heat 
and turmoil in her brain. It was as if upon a seed-bed 
of quick -shooting plants a bright, warm light had been 
turned, resulting in instant, magical activity. At her 
door they put her down, and once more she thanked 
them. 

“ It’s nothing at all, my dear ; we hope to do more 
for you,” said Mrs. Harvey. “ I want you to come to 
dinner soon. You’ll come ? ” 

“With pleasure,” Rose responded, quite as a man 
might have done. 


CHAPTER XX 


ROSE SETS FACE TOWARD THE OPEN ROAD 

When Rose reached her room, she found the packet 
of poems lying on her desk. It had come in the after- 
noon mail. 

She sat down by the toilet-table with a burning flush 
on her face. A world seemed some way to lie between 
her present self and the writer of those imitative verses. 
She wished to see, yet feared to see what he had writ- 
ten, and taking up the packet she fingered the string 
while she meditated. She had not absolutely promised 
not to read the letter, though she had pledged herself 
to burn the poems. 

Her life was so suddenly filled with new emotions 
and impulses, that she was bewildered by them. The 
music, the audience-room, the splendid assemblage, and 
some compelling power in Mason — all of these (or he 
alone) had changed her point of view. It was a little 
thing to the great city, a little thing to him probably 
but to her it was like unto the war of life and death. 

What, indeed, was the use of being an echo of 
passion, a copy ? She had always hated conformity ; 
she hated to dress like other girls ; why should she be 
244 


Rose Sets Face toward the Open Road 245 

without individuality in her verse, the very part wherein, 
as Mason had intimated, she should be most character- 
istically herself? 

She had the chance to succeed. The people seemed 
ready to listen to her if she had something to say j and 
she had something to say — why not say it ? 

Rising tense with resolution, she opened the stove 
and dropped the packet in, and closed the door and 
held it as if she feared the packet might explode in her 
face, or cry out at her. In her poems she would have 
had the heroine fling it in the grate and snatch it out 
again, but having no grate the stove must serve, and 
there could be no snatching at the packet, no remorse- 
ful kisses of the charred body. It was gone in a dull 
roar. 

She sat down and waited till the flame died out, and 
then drew up to her desk and wrote swiftly for an hour. 
She grew sleepy at last, as the tumult of her brain began 
to die away. Just before she went to sleep all her 
lovers came before her : Carl, in the strawberry-scented 
glade ; William De Lisle, shining of limb, courtesying 
under the lifting canvas roof; Dr. Thatcher, as he 
looked that afternoon in the school-room ; Forest Darn- 
lee, with the physical beauty of William De Lisle, but 
vain and careless ; Professor Ellis, seated at his desk in 
the chalk-laden air, or perched on the ladder beneath 
the great telescope, a man who lived in abstract regions 
far from sense and sound; and Tom Harris, slim, grace- 
ful, always smiling — Tom, who had the songs of birds, 
the smell of flowers, the gleam of sunset-water leagued 


246 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

with him — who almost conquered, but who passed on 
out of her life like a dapple of purple shadow across the 
lake. 

And now she faced two others, for she could see that 
Owen was turning to her from Mary, and he had great 
charm. He was one of the purest-souled men she had 
ever known, and was enriched also by a suggestion of 
paganism, of mystery, as of free spaces and savage, un- 
stained wildernesses. He could give her a beautiful 
home, and would not restrict her freedom. He would 
be her subject, not her master. 

Then there was Mason — of him what ? She did 
not know. He stood outside her knowledge of men. 
She could neither read his face nor understand his voice. 
He scared her with a look or a phrase. Sometimes he 
looked old and cynical, but to-night how tenderly and 
sympathetically he had spoken ! How considerately 
silent he had been ! 

When she awoke, Mary was standing looking down 
at her. 

“If you’re going to have any breakfast. Rose, you’d 
better be stirring. It’s nine o’clock, and everything’s 
ready to clear away. What kind of time did you 
have ? ” 

Rose resented her question, but forced herself to 
answer : 

“ Beautiful ! ” 

“ I saw you in the box. Owen and I were in the 
second balcony. You were just scrumptious ! I 
wanted to throw a kiss at you.” She fell upon Rose 


Rose Sets Face toward the Open Road 247 

and squeezed her, quilt and all, in her long arms. “ My 
stars ! I wish I was lovely and a poet.” 

She felt nothing but joy over her idol’s good fortune, 
and it made Rose feel guilty to think how resentful and 
secretive she had become. There was coming into her 
friendship with Mary something which prevented further 
confidence — a feeling that Mary was not a suitable 
confidant, and could not understand the subtleties of her 
position, which was correct. 

With Mary, procedure was always plain sailing. 
Either she was in love and wanted to marry, or she 
wasn’t. Her ideals changed comparatively little, and 
were healthily commonplace. Her friendships were 
quick, warm, and stable. She was the country girl in 
the city, and would be so until death. If she felt dis- 
posed, she chewed gum or ate an apple on the street 
like a boy, and she walked on the Lake Shore Sunday 
evening with Owen, unconscious (and uncaring) of the 
servant-girls and their lovers seated on every bench. 

Rose was growing away from her friend. She per- 
ceived it dimly the first week, and now the certainty of it 
troubled her. Her life was too subtle, too complicated, 
and too problematic, for honest, freckle-faced, broad- 
cheeked Mary to analyze. 

Then, too, there was the question of Owen. Soon 
Mary must see how he set face toward her, but she felt 
quite equal to answering him when Owen came to 
speak, because his appeal to her was not in the slightest 
degree sensuous, as Tom Harris’s had been. 

She spent the day in deep thought, jotting down some 


248 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

lines which came to her, and writing a letter home. 
She filled it full of love and praise for “ pappa John,” as 
if in remorse for growing so far away from him. 

That done she fell back in thought upon her group 
of friends ; upon the concert, and upon her eventful 
promenade with Mason. 

The world of art which she was beginning to imagine 
seemed so secure and reposeful, so filled with splendor 
of human endeavor, that nothing else seemed worth 
while. She drew her breath in a mighty resolution to be 
a part of it. Art had always seemed to her to be afar 
off, something European, but now she seemed to be 
coming in personal contact with it, and for a day she 
soared in exultation only to fall the day after into dreary 
doubt of her powers. 

Her literary ideals were so hopelessly confused ! She 
had lost the desire to write as she had been writing, and 
there seemed nothing left to write about. The door had 
closed upon her old forms of action, and yet the way 
Mason had pointed out to her was dark and utterly be- 
wildering. She felt great things moving around her; 
themes, deeds that were enormous, but so vaguely 
defined, she could not lay hold upon them. 

As she went down the street to Dr. Herrick’s house 
on the night of the party, she had a feeling of having 
committed herself to something. She knew that Isabel 
had taken her case in hand, and that several young men 
had been invited to meet her. She could not resent this 
zeal of her new-found friend for it was manifestly from 
the heart — could not be otherwise. Of what advan- 


Rose Sets Face toward the Open Road 249 

tage to Dr. Herrick could it be to take her up — a poor 
country girl ? 

In fact, she was puzzled by this overpowering kind- 
ness. There was so little apparent reason for it all. 
She could not, of course, understand the keen delight of 
introducing a powerful and fresh young mind to the 
wonders of the city. She had not grown weary of 
“ sets ” and “ circles,” and of meeting the same com- 
monplace people again and again, as Mrs. Harvey had. 
Isabel’s position was different, but she had an equal de- 
light, more subtle and lasting, in seeing the genius (as 
she believed) of the girl win its way, and besides, the 
girl, herself, pleased her mightily. 

Isabel Herrick’s life was one of deep earnestness and 
high aims. She was the daughter of a physician in an 
interior city and had worked her way up from the bot- 
tom in the usual American fashion by plucky efforts 
constantly directed to one end. She was the head of 
the house of Herrick, which consisted of her young 
sister, a brother at college, and her aged mother, now 
an invalid. 

She had been one of the first three girls to enter the 
medical school, and had been the shield and fortress to 
others of her sex in the storm which followed their 
entrance into the dissecting-room. The battle was 
short but decisive. Her little head was lifted and her 
face white as she said : 

“ Men — I won’t say gentlemen — I’m here for busi- 
ness, and I’m here to stay. If you’re afraid of competi- 
tion from a woman you’d better get out of the profession.” 


250 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


In the dead silence which followed a lank country 
fellow stepped out and raised his voice. 

“She’s right, and I’m ready to stand by her, and 
I’ll see she’s let alone.” 

Others shouted : “ Of course she’s right ! ” by 

which it appeared the disturbance was of the few and 
not the mass of students, a fact which Isabel shrewdly 
inferred. She spoke a grateful word to the lanky stu- 
dent, and Dr. Sanborn found his wife right there. 

There was little for Isabel to discover concerning the 
sordid and vicious side of men. She knew them for 
what they were, polygamous by instinct, insatiable as 
animals, and yet she had been treated on the whole with 
courteous — often too courteous — kindness. Her 
dainty color and her petite figure won over-gallant foot- 
way everywhere, though she often said : 

“ Gentlemen, I have studied my part. I know what 
I am doing and I ask only a fair field and no favors.” 

Thatcher and Sanborn had been her close companions 
in the stern, hard course they set themselves ; each had 
said, with vast resolution to the other : “ I’m not to 

be left behind.” Thatcher had made apparently the 
least mark in the world, but was writing a monograph 
which was expected to give important facts to the medi- 
cal profession. He had written to Sanborn several 
times : “You have the advantage of association with the 
‘ Little Corporal.’ ” 

They called her “ Little Corporal ” among them- 
selves because her stern, sweet face had a suggestion of 
Napoleon in it, and besides she ordered them about so 


Rose Sets Face toward the Open Road 251 

naturally and led them so inevitably in everything she 
undertook. 

It was into the hands of the “ Little Corporal ” that 
Rose had fallen, and all Isabel’s enthusiasm was roused 
in her behalf. Her own sister was a sweet, placid little 
thing, who had inherited the body, and spirit as well, of 
her mother, while Isabel had inherited the mind of her 
father in the body of her mother. 

Something of this Thatcher had told Rose, part of it 
Isabel had imparted, and it made only one definite 
impression on Rose — this, that a woman could succeed 
if she set her teeth hard and did not waste time. 

She found Isabel already surrounded by company. 
On every other Sunday evening she was informally “ at 
home,” and certain well-known artists and professional 
people dropped in to talk awhile, or to sit at her gener- 
ous table. It was a good place to be, as Rose had 
perception enough to feel, once her first timidity had 
passed. 

“ Oh, you dear child ! Fm glad to see you. There’s 
someone here you’ll be glad to see.” 

Rose flushed a little, thinking of Mason. 

“ It’s an old friend — Dr. Thatcher.” 

Rose clapped her hands : “ Oh, is he ? I’m so glad ; 
it’s almost like seeing the folks.” 

“ I’ve asked Elbert Harvey and Mr. Mason also ; I 
didn’t want you to think I had no friends but doctors. 
It must seem to you quite as if my world were made up 
of medicine men. But it isn’t.” 

Thatcher greeted Rose quietly but with a pressure of 


2^2 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

the hand which made up for his impassivity of counte- 
nance. He trembled a little as he took his seat and 
saw Rose greeting Sanborn and Mason. 

Fear and admiration were both present in Rose’s heart 
as Mason took her hand. 

She forced herself to look into his face, and started to 
find his eyes so terribly penetrating. 

“ I burned the packet,” she said, with a constrained 
smile. 

His eyes grew softer and a little humorous. 

‘‘ Did you, indeed ! Without opening ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Heroic girl ! ” 

“ Am I not ? ” she said over her shoulder as Isabel 
dragged her toward a tall smooth-faced young fellow 
who stood talking with Etta. 

“ Elbert, this is Miss Butcher — Rose, young Mr. 
Harvey, son of our hostess at the concert.” 

Young Harvey seemed much taken back as he faced 
Rose, but shook hands heartily in the angular fashion 
current among college men. His mind formulated 
these opinions : “ She’s a stunner ! Caroline was dead 

right ! ” By “ Caroline ” he meant his mother. 

Rose catalogued him at once as “another college 
boy.” Paul and Etta joined them, making a handsome 
group, and they were soon as much at ease as school- 
mates of a year’s standing, laughing, telling stories, and 
fighting over the East and the West. 

Rose stoutly defended the Western colleges ; they 
had their place, she said. 


Rose Sets Face toward the Open Road 253 

‘‘ So they have,’’ Elbert replied, ‘‘ but let them keep 
it.” 

‘‘ Their place is at the head, and that’s where we’ll put 
them soon,” she said. 

Elbert told a story about hazing a Western boy at 
Yale. He grew excited and sprang up to dramatize it. 
He stood on one foot and screwed up his face, while the 
rest shrieked with laughter, all except Rose, who thought 
it unjust. 

Mason looked on from his low chair with a revealing 
touch of envious sadness. He had gone far past that 
life — past the land of youth and love — past the islands 
of mirth and minstrelsy. He was facing a cold, gray 
sea, with only here and there a grim granite reef gnaw- 
ing the desolate water into foam. 

It made him long to be part of that group again, and 
he valued Rose more at that moment than ever before. 
‘‘ The girl has imagination, she has variety. She is not 
a simple personality. At the concert she was exalted, 
rapt, her eyes deep. To-night she is a school-girl. 
Then it was Wagner — now it is college horse-play.” 

Isabel came up to sit a moment by him. 

“ Isn’t she fine ? I think I surprised young Harvey. 
I thought I’d like to have her meet him — he’s such a 
fine fellow. She should meet someone else besides us 
old fogies.” 

Mason winced a little. 

“Well now, that’s pleasant! Do you call me an 
old fogy?” 

She laughed : 


254 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


“ Oh, we’re not old in years, but we’re old in ex- 
perience. The bloom of the grape is lost.” 

“ But the grape is ripe, and we still have that. The 
bloom — what is it ? A nest for bacteria.” 

“ But it is so beautiful with the bloom on,” she said, 
wistfully. “ I’d take it again, bacteria and all. See 
those young people ! The meeting of their eyes is 
great as fame, and the touch — the accidental touch of 
their hands or shoulders, like a return of lost ships. I 
am thirty-three years of age and I’ve missed that 
somewhere.” 

Mason lifted his eyebrows. 

“ Do you mean to say that the touch of Sanborn’s 
hand does not hasten your blood ? ” 

“I do — and yet I love him as much as I shall ever 
love anybody — now.” 

Mason studied her, and then chanted, softly : 

“Another came in the days that were golden. 

One that was fair, in the days of the olden 
Time, long ago ! 

You’ve never told me about that.” 

She smiled. “ No, but I will some time — perhaps.” 

She led the way out to supper with Dr. Thatcher, and 
the rest followed without quite breaking off conversation, 
a merry, witty procession. 

Rose was conscious of a readjustment of values. Dr. 
Thatcher had less weight in the presence of these 
people, but Mason — Mason easily dominated the table 
without effort. Indeed, he was singularly silent, but 


Rose Sets Face toward the Open Road 255 

there was something in the poise of his head, in the 
glance of his eyes, which indicated power, and insight 
into life. 

The young folks, led by young Harvey, took posses- 
sion of the table, and laughter rippled from brief silence 
to silence like a mountain stream. Young Harvey aided 
at the chafing-dish with the air of an adept, and Isabel 
was almost as light-hearted in laughter as he. 

Thatcher and Mason seemed to sit apart from it, and 
Mason found opportunity to say: 

“ You knew our young friend of the coolly — dis- 
covered her, in fact ? ” 

“Yes, as much as anyone could discover her. It’s a 
little early to talk of her as if she had achieved fame.” 

“ Dr. Herrick thinks she’s on the instant of going up 
higher, and so we’re all hanging to her skirts in hopes 
of getting a rise.” 

Thatcher didn’t like Mason’s tone. 

“ Rose is a hard worker. If she rises any higher it 
will be by the same methods which put her through 
college.” He spoke with a little air of proprietorship. 

Mason felt the rebuff, but he was seeking information 
about Rose, and could afford to ignore it. 

“She’s an only child, I believe.” 

“Yes; her father is a hard-working, well-to-do farmer 
in a little ‘ coolly ’ in Wisconsin.” 

“ It’s the same old story, I suppose ; he doesn’t realize 
that he’s lost his daughter to the city of Chicago. We 
gain at his expense.” 

Mason’s mind had something feminine about it, and 


256 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

he perceived as never before how attractive to Rose a 
fine young fellow like Harvey could be. Being rich he 
was lifted above worry. His activity was merely whole- 
some exercise, and his flesh was pink and velvety as a 
girl’s. He was strong, too, as it was the fashion of 
college men of his day to be. He had never known 
want or care in his splendid life. He was, moreover, a 
good boy. Money had not spoiled his sterling nature. 
It was no wonder that Rose’s eyes grew wide and dark as 
they rested on him. They were physically a beautiful 
pair, and their union seemed the most inevitable thing 
in the world. 

Isabel leaned over to say : 

“Aren’t they enjoying themselves.? I wish Mrs. 
Harvey could see them.” 

After they had returned to the sitting-room a couple 
of young artists came in with John Coburg, Mason’s 
room-mate on the Star. He was a meagre-faced fel- 
low of extra-solemn visage, relieved by twinkling black 
eyes. The artists were keen, alert-looking fellows, 
with nothing to indicate their profession save their 
pointed beards. One of them being lately from Paris 
turned his mustaches up devilishly ; the other had fallen 
away from his idols sufficiently to wear his mustaches 
turned down, and allowed himself an extra width of 
beard. 

Rose was glad Mr. Davidson twisted his mustache ; 
there was so little else about him to indicate his high 
calling. 

Their coming turned the current of talk upon matters 


Rose Sets Face toward the Open Road 257 

of art, which made Rose feel perfectly certain she was 
getting at the heart of Chicago artistic life. 

Mr. Davidson inveighed against America, and 
Chicago especially, for its ‘‘ lack of art atmosphere.” 

“ If you’ve got the creative power you can make 
your own art atmosphere,” his companion hotly said. 
“You always start up on that tack.” Evidently it was 
a source of violent argument between them. 

“ The trouble is you fellows who paint, want to 
make a living too easy,” Mason remarked. 

“ You ought to stay and do pioneer work among us,” 
said Isabel. 

“ I don’t consider it worth while, so far as I am con- 
cerned. I prefer Paris.” 

“ You’re not very patriotic.” 

“ There is no patriotism in art.” 

“That’s the regular Parisian jabber,” returned his^ 
friend. “ I talked all that myself. What you need is 
a touch of poverty. I’d like to see your people drop 
you in a small town where you had to make your own 
living for a little while.” 

“The hard conditions of Chicago are changing,” 
Isabel interposed, with peaceful intent. “ All that was 
true a few years ago is not true now. The materialism 
you war against no longer dominates us. We are 
giving a little time to art and literature.” 

Davidson twisted his mustache point. “ It isn’t 
noticeable yet — Oh, there’s a little band of fellows 
starving here like rats in a garret — but what general 
recognition of art have you ? ” 


258 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 


“ What could you expect ? ” 

“Well, you might buy pictures.’’ 

“We do — old masters and salon pictures,” said 
Mills, with a relenting acknowledgment of the city’s 
weakness. 

“That’s it exactly!” said Davidson. “You’ve no 
judgment here. You are obliged to take your judgment 
from somebody else.” 

So the talk proceeded. To Rose it was illuminating 
and epoch-making. She read in it the city’s developing 
thought. Paris and the Rocky Mountains met here with 
Chicago and the most modern types of men and women. 

Meanwhile Mason found opportunity to say to 
Thatcher, who seemed a little ill at ease : 

“These little informal Sunday suppers and free-for- 
alls are increasing in number, and they are signs of 
civilization. Of course a few of the women still go to 
church in the morning, but that will wear off, except at 
new-bonnet time.” 

Thatcher did not reply ; he thought Mason a little 
flippant. 

Rose sought opportunity to talk about Mrs. Thatcher 
and Josephine. 

“ They’re quite well.” 

“ I wish I could see them both.” 

“We should be glad to welcome you back to Madi- 
son any time. But I hardly expect to see you, except 
on a vacation, possibly. You’re a city dweller already. 
I can see that.” He seemed sadder than she had ever 
known him, and his look troubled her a little. 


Rose Sets Face toward the Open Road 259 

At ten o’clock she rose to go, and young Harvey 
sprang up : 

“ Are you going ? If you are I hope you’ll give me 
the pleasure — my carriage ” 

‘‘ Thank you very much,” she answered, quickly. 
“ I’ve a friend coming for me.” Thatcher rose as if to 
go with her, but sat down again with a level line of 
resolution on his lips. 

Mason and Harvey both wondered a little about that 
friend. Mason took a certain delight in young Harvey’s 
defeat, and analyzed his pulse to find out why he was 
delighted. “We should mob that friend,” he said to 
Sanborn. “ He is an impertinence, at this time.” 

Rose felt Isabel’s arm around her as she entered the 
cloak-room. 

“ Isn’t he fine ? ” 

“ Who?” 

“ Mr. Harvey.” 

« Qh — yes — so are the artists.” Rose began to 
wonder if Isabel were not a matchmaker as well as a 
promoter of genius. 

Isabel had a suspicion of Rose’s thought and she 
laughingly said : 

“ Don’t think I’m so terrible ! I do like to bring 
the right people together. I see so many people wrongly 
mated, but I don’t mean — I only want you to know 
nice people. You’re to do your own choosing,” she 
said, with sudden gravity. “No one can choose for 
you. There are some things I want to talk about 
when I can venture it,” 


26 o Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

Mason and Sanborn were the last to go and when 
Isabel returned from the door, where she had speeded 
the last guest, she dropped into a chair and sighed. 

‘‘It’s splendid good fun, but it does tire me so! Talk 
to me now while I rest.” 

“ Sanborn, talk ! ” Mason commanded. 

Sanborn drew a chair near Isabel and put his arm 
about her. She leaned her head on his shoulder. 

Mason rose in mock confusion. 

“ I beg your pardon I I should have gone before.” 

Isabel smiled. “ Don’t go ; we’re not disturbed.” 

“ I was considering myself.” 

“ Oh, you were I ” 

“ Such things shock me, but if I may smoke I might 
be able ” 

“Of course. Smoke and tell me what you think of 
Rose now I Isn’t it strange how that girl gets on ? She’s 
one of the women born to win her way without effort. 
It isn’t true to say it is physical ; that’s only part of it 
— it’s temperament.” 

Mason got his cigar well alight before he said : 

“ She has the prime virtue — imagination.” 

“ Is that a woman’s prime virtue ? ” 

“To me it is. Of course there are other domestic 
and conjugal virtues which are commonly ranked higher, 
but they are really subordinate. Sappho and Helen and 
Mary of the Scots were not beautiful nor virtuous, as 
such terms go ; they had imagination, and imagination 
gave them variety, and variety means endless charm. 
It is decidedly impossible to keep up your interest in a 


Rose Sets Face toward the Open Road 261 

woman who is the same yesterday, to-day, and to-mor- 
row — whose orbit can be predicted, whose radiance 
is without the shadow of turning.” 

“ Should he be stopped ? ” Isabel asked of Sanborn. 

“I shouldn’t like the job,” Sanborn replied. “When 
he strikes that line of soliloquy he’s out of my control.” 

Rose again found Owen waiting in the hall, and she 
accepted his escort with the frankness of a sister. 

“ Have you waited long ? ” 

“ No, I was just going to ring the bell when I heard 
your voice.” 

They walked on in silence. At last he asked : 

“ Did you have a good time ? ” 

“ Splendid ! ” she answered. 

“We missed you,” he said. 

Rose felt something tender in his voice and remained 
silent. 

“ I heard from my partners to-day.” He went on 
after a pause — “They’re feeling mighty good. Struck 
another vein that promises better than the one we have. 

I ought to go out, but I ” He paused abruptly. 

“Did you ever see the Rockies in late fall ? Oh, they’re 
mighty, mighty as the sky ! I wish you’d — I wish we 
could make up a party some time and go out. I’d take 
a car ” 

She faced the situation. 

“ I’ll tell you what would be nice : When you and 
Mary take your wedding-trip I’ll go along to take care 
of you both.” 


262 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

Owen fairly staggered under the import of that 
speech, and could find nothing to say in reply. After a 
long pause, he pleasantly inquired, as if for the first time : 

“ Did you have a good time to-night ? ” 

“Splendid! I always do when I go to Isabel’s.” 
Thereafter they walked in silence. 

Rose fell to thinking of young Harvey in the days 
which followed. There was allurement in his presence 
quite different from that of any other young man she 
had ever known. She could not remember anything he 
had said, but he had made her laugh, and his face was so 
frank and boyish. She felt in him the grace and the 
charm which come from security of position and free- 
dom from care. 

He brought up to her mind, by force of contrast, her 
father, with eyes dimmed by the harsh winds, the dust, 
and the glowing sun, who was in the midst of long, dull 
days wandering about the house and barn, going to bed 
early in order to rise with the sun, to begin the same 
grind of duties the day following. Young Harvey’s life 
was the exact opposite of this and to Rose it was most 
alluring. 

Elbert admired her, she felt that as distinctly as if he 
had already put his feeling into words. He wanted to 
be near her. He had asked her to help him with the 
chafing-dish that night, and to pour the beer while he 
stirred the gluey mass of cheese. All the little signs by 
which a young man expresses his admiration had been 
used almost artlessly, certainly boyishly. 

The girl who became his wife would find certain 


Rose Sets Face toward the Open Road 263 

relief from toil and worry. What a marvellous thing 
to be suddenly set free from all fear of hunger and every 
harassing thought about the future ! And it was not a 
question of marrying an old man, or a man of repulsive 
appearance ; it was a question of taking a bright, hand- 
some, young man, together with his money. She felt 
the power to put out her hand and claim him as her 
own. 

She liked him, too ; he amused her and interested 
her. She admired his splendid health and his clear, 
laughing eyes. It seemed the easiest thing in the 
world — to an outsider. Isabel, she well knew, was 
working hard to have her see young Harvey at his best, 
and she felt, too, that Mrs. Harvey was taking unusual 
interest in her, and in her secret heart she knew she 
could marry into that fine family, but — 

Liking was not love ! She did not shiver when he 
clasped her hand, as she did when Mason greeted her. 
She feared Mason. When he came by, her judgment 
blurred and her eyes fell. She couldn't tell what his 
traits were, and she didn't know whether he was a good 
man or not. She hungered to see him, to hear his voice; 
beyond that she hardly dared consciously go. 

His attitude toward her she could not understand. 
Sometimes he seemed anxious to please her, sometimes 
he seemed equally determined that she should under- 
stand how inconsequential she was in his life — and 
always he dominated her. 

She did not once think it might be indecision in his 
mind — after the usual stupidity of love’s victims, she 


264 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

thought his changes of manner due in some way to her. 
She had acted foolishly, or she was looking so badly he 
was ashamed of her. 

In this condition of mind, it may be imagined, she did 
not do much studying or writing. She went to the 
library regularly, but she could not concentrate her 
thoughts upon her book. She grew surly and change- 
able with Mary, who no longer dared to talk unguard- 
edly with her. 

Mary’s eyes were not glass marbles ; she could see 
things with them, and she said gleefully to Owen one 
night : 

“ She’s in love, that’s what is the matter with her. 
I don’t mind it. She’ll be all right after awhile. She’s 
short as pie-crust with me, but I know how it is myself. 
She’s in love with some high-flyer she’s met at Dr. 
Herrick’s house.” 

Then she wondered why Owen made no reply. 


CHAPTER XXI 


MASON TALKS AGAIN 

Not seeing Mason for some days, Sanborn took a 
walk one night, and turned up about nine o’clock at his 
rooms. He found him sitting before his open-grate fire, 
smoking meditatively. 

“ Hello, Sanborn ! Glad you came over.” He did 
not rise, but Sanborn was untroubled by that. 

“ Got another chapter turned off? ” 

“ Possibly. Fill up and draw up.” 

Sanborn obediently filled a pipe and drew up a chair. 

“You look tired.” 

“ I am. I have written a column editorial on the 
labor question, one on the Chinese treaty, a special 
article on irrigation for the Sunday issue, not counting 
odd paragraphs on silver, anarchy, and other little chores 
of my daily grind.” 

“ That’s not so bad as poulticing people.” 

“ Bad ! There’s nothing any worse, and my novel- 
istic friends are always saying, ‘ Why don’t you turn in 
and finish up your novel ? ’ What can an intellectual 
prostitute do ? ” 

“ Get out of the business, one would suppose.” 

265 


266 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

‘‘ Well, now, that brings me to the point. In the 
midst of all my other worriments, I am debating whether 
to marry a rich girl and escape work, or a poor girl and 
work harder, or to give the whole matter of marriage up 
forever.’’ 

“ These are actual cases, not hypothetical, this time ? ” 

Mason turned a slow eye upon him. 

“ I have no need to fly to hypothetical cases,” he said, 
dryly. “In the first place, my hero — if you incline 
to-night to that theory of the case — my hero is equally 
interested in two young women. This is contrary to 
the story-books, but then only an occasional novelist 
tells the truth. I’m to be that one.” 

He seemed to be going off upon some other line of 
thought, and Sanborn hauled him back by asking a 
pertinent question : 

“You mean to say both of these young ladies have 
that glamour ? ” 

“ Oh, not at all ! They did have, but it has faded in 
both cases, as in all previous cases, yet more seems to 
have remained, or else I am getting a little less exacting. 
In the case of the sculptress — she’s the poor girl, of 
course — she’s a genius. The first time I saw her she 
read a paper on ‘ The Modern in Sculpture ’ (it was 
good, too). She was dressed beautifully, in cheese- 
cloth, for all I know — I only know she put to shame 
her sculptured copies of Hope and Ariadne. The 
glamour was around her like rose-colored flame. It 
was about her still when I stepped up to her. She was 
tall, and strong as a young lioness. Her soft sweet eyes 


Mason Talks Again 267 

were level with mine, and she made me ashamed of every 
mean thing I had uttered in my whole life.” 

“Well, well!” exclaimed Sanborn. 

“She was flattered and exalted to think ‘the editor' 
was pleased with her essay, and the rest was easy. I 

went to call on her a day or two later ” 

“ And the glamour — the glamour ? ” 

Mason shook his head. “Faint! She was in her 
study, and the hard, cold light was merciless. She was 
handsome, even then, but her face had a pinched look, 
and there was a heavy droop to her lips. The color so 
beautiful that night when flushed with excitement had 
faded from her cheeks, and gathered in some unfortunate 
way about her eyes and nose. She was a fine woman, 
but — the glamour was gone.” 

“ What an eye for symptoms ! you should have been 
a physician,” Sanborn put in. 

“At the same time she grew upon me. She’s an 
artist. She has the creative hand — no doubt of that. 
She has dreams, beautiful dreams of art. She glows, 
and dilates, and sings with the joy of it. She could 
bring into my life something of the dreams I myself had 
as a youth. She’s going to make a name for herself, 
without question.” 

“ Why, that’s glorious, Warren, old man ; she’s just 
the wife for you ! And she really inclines toward you ? ” 
“She does.” Then his self-crucifying humor came 
in. “ That’s really her most questionable virtue. How- 
ever, if Love can laugh at locksmiths, I suppose he can 
laugh at a bald head. But this is only one phase of the 


268 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

matter. Like all spectators, you are informed of only 
one side of the banner. Let’s look at the other. 

“ I manage to live here and support this fire, which 
is my only extravagance. I keep the establishment go- 
ing, and a little more. I’ll anticipate the usual argu- 
ments. Suppose, for a little while, it would not increase 
expenses. It would not do to bring a woman here, it 
would not be right. When children came — and I should 
hope for children — they should have a home in the sub- 
urbs ; I don’t believe in raising children in a flat. That 
would mean an establishment which would take every 
cent I could hook on to, and it would mean that the 
whole glittering fabric would be built upon my own per- 
sonal palm.” 

“ But she might earn something — you say she’s a 
genius.” 

“ She is, that’s the reason she’ll never make money. 
Holding the view I do, I could not require her to toil. 
I do not believe marriage confers any authority on the 
husband — you understand my position there ” 

“ Perfectly — and agree with it, to a limited extent, 
of course.” 

“ Going back, therefore — I do not believe I can as- 
sume the risk involved. I’m not capable of twenty years’ 
work at my present rate. I’d break down, some fine day, 
and then my little home, upheld upon my Atlas palm, 
would tumble. No, I can’t take the risk. I’m getting 
too foxy; I haven’t the bounce I once had. Besides, 
her career is to be considered. I don’t believe I can 
afford to let her marry me.” 


Mason Talks Again 269 

“That’s mighty kind of you,” Sanborn dryly remarked. 

“ Thank you. I think it is an error of judgment on 
her part. She is younger, and as her adviser I think I 
must interfere and save her from the power of a vivid 
imagination and abounding vitality. You see, there are 
a great many considerations involved.” 

“ Real love, I must repeat, would not consider.” 

“ I wish you wouldn’t repeat it, it does you an injus- 
tice. The animal passion of youth would not consider. 
With youth, it is marry — marry, even if within the 
year you are picked up by the patrol wagon, a vagrant 
in the streets. The love of my time is not so heedless 
nor so selfish ; it extends to the question of the other 
party to the transaction.” 

“ I suppose that should be so, but as a physician I 
doubt it. My observations do not run that way. Age 
grows like a child again, thoroughly selfish.” 

“ Then there is the question of the ‘possible woman,”’ 
Mason resumed, and his tone was cynically humorous 
again. “ I can’t give her up. There she stands in a 
radiant mist always just before me like the rainbow of 
our childhood. I can’t promise any woman to love her 
till death. I don’t know as it would be safe to promise 
it even to the woman with glamour. Another might 
come with a subtler glory, and a better fitting glamour, 
and then ” 

“ What then ? ” 

“ It would be all up with the first woman,” he said, 
with a gravity of tone of which the words gave no hint. 

“ I’m afraid someone has already come to make pale 


270 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


the beauty of the sculptress. What about the other, 
the rich girl you set over against the sculptress at the 
beginning ? Mind you, I believe the whole situation is 
fictitious, but ril humor you in it.” 

“Well, Aurelia — we’ll call her Aurelia — brings up 
a far-reaching train of reflections, and, if you’ve got a 
patient waiting, you’d better come again.” 

“ I’m the only patient waiting.” 

Mason ignored the lame old pun and proceeded : 

“ Aurelia lives in Springfield. You know the kind of 
home the wealthy politician builds in a Western town 
— combination of jail and court-house. I attended a 
reception there last winter and saw Aurelia for the first 
time. She was as beautiful as an acrobat ” 

“ I don’t want to interrupt. Mason, but I notice all 
your heroines are beautiful.” 

“ They must be ; my taste will not permit me to 
tolerate unsymmetrical heroines. I started in as an 
architect and I’ve done a little paddling in clay, and my 
heroines must be harmonious of structure — glamour 
comes only with beauty, to me.” 

“ Largely physical, then.” 

“ Certainly ! I believe in the physical, the healthy, 
wholesome physical. In the splendor of the tiger’s 
wooing is no disease.” 

“Well, well, she was beautiful as an acrobat ” 

Mason looked sour. “ One more interruption, and 
the rest of my heart-tragedy will remain forever alien to 
your ear.” 

Sanborn seemed alarmed. 


2 ?! 


Mason Talks Again 

“ My lips are glued to my pipe/' 

Mason mused — (“ Composed ! " Sanborn thought.) 

“ She looked as if she had been moulded into her 
gown. The Parisian robe and the hair piled high, were 
fast — undeniably theatric, but her little face was sweet 
and girlish, almost childish. Well, she had glamour, 
largely physical as you say. But like the heroes of 
E. P. Roe’s novels, I aspired to awaken her soul. She 
was pleased with me apparently. I called soon after 
the reception — I always follow up each case of gla- 
mour. I knew she was rich, but I did not realize she 
commanded such an establishment. 

“ It was enormous. Her mother was a faded little 
hen of a woman, who had been a very humble person in 
youth, and who continued a very humble person in 
middle-life. The court-house in which she was forced 
to live, continually over-awed her, but the girl used it, 
entertained in it as if she had a string of palace-dwelling 
ancestors straggling clear back to Charlemagne.” 

‘‘ That’s the American idea, the power of adaptation. 
Our women have it better developed than ” 

“ She was a gracious and charming hostess, and I 
admit the sight of her in command of such an establish- 
ment was impressive. I thought how easily a tired 
editor could be absorbed into that institution and be at 
rest — a kind of life hospital, so to say. She was inter- 
ested in me — that was certain.” 

“ Now, Mason, I must protest. You know how 
high Isabel and I both hold you, but we never quite 
considered you in the light of a ladies’ man. Your 


272 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

Springfield girl must have had dozens of brilliant and 
handsome young men about her.” 

Mason smoked in silence, waiting till Sanborn’s buzz 
ceased. 

“ Well, she came to the city last month, and I’ve 
been to see her a number of times ; the last time I saw 
her she proposed to me.” 

Sanborn stared, with fallen jaw gaping, while Mason 
continued in easy flow. 

“ And I have the matter under consideration. I saw 
the coming storm in her eyes. Last night as we sat 
together at the piano she turned suddenly and faced me, 
very tense and very white. 

“ ‘ Mr. Mason, why can’t you — I mean — what do 
you think of me ? ’ 

“ I couldn’t tell her that night what I thought of her, 
for she had seemed more minutely commonplace than 
ever. She had trotted round her little well-worn circle 
of graces and accomplishments, even to playing her 
favorite selection on the piano. I equivocated. I pro- 
fessed it was not very easy to say what I thought of her, 
and added : 

“ ‘ I think you’re a fine, wholesome girl,’ as she is, of 
course. 

“‘But you don’t think I’m beautiful?’ That was a 
woman’s question, wasn’t it ? ‘ Yes,’ I said in reply, ‘ I 
think you are very attractive. Nature has been lavish 
with you.’ 

“Then she flamed red and stammered a little : 

“ ‘ Then why don’t you like me ? ’ 


Mason Talks Again 273 

“ ‘ I do/ I said. 

‘‘ ‘ You know what I mean/ she hurried on to say 
— ‘ I want you to like me better than any other 
woman.’ 

‘‘ ‘ That’s impossible/ I replied. It was pitiful to see 
her sitting there like a beggar in the midst of all her 
splendor. ‘ I like you very much. I think you’re very 
sweet and kind and girlish.’ 

“ She seemed to react from her boldness. Her eyes 
filled with tears. ‘ I know you think I’m terrible to say 
these things.’ 

“ ‘ No. I feel that I do not deserve such trust on 
your part.’ Then she defended me. ‘Yes, you do. I 
couldn’t have spoken to anyone else so. You’re so 
kind and gentle.’ ” 

“ Did she say that of you ? ” asked Sanborn. 

“ She said that.” 

Sanborn sighed. “ I wish I could reach that phase 
of your character. What did you say in reply ? ” 

Mason apparently showed deep feeling at last. 

“ I told her that I was like the average man. I was 
taking credit to myself for not devouring her like a 
wolf! She didn’t listen to that. ‘What can I do to 
make you like me ? ’ she asked. She leaned toward me, 
her chin in her palm, thinking and suffering as her 
sweet little soul had never suffered before. ‘ I’m too sim- 
ple,’ she said, with a flash of startling insight. ‘ I don’t 
know enough. I feel that. Can’t I study and change 
that ? ’ 

“ ‘ You’re changing that now,’ I replied. 


274 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

“ She grew radiant for a moment. 

“ ‘ Oh, you do like me a little ! ’ ” 

As he went on, Mason’s tone grew sweet and solemn. 
It had singular power of suggestion, and developed 
more of his nature than he knew; his real gravity and 
tenderness and purity appeared in every word. 

“ There you have it,” he ended. He ended by strik- 
ing the ashes out of his pipe. 

“ I could marry her, but it wouldn’t make her happy. 
It would make her suffer. It is not a light thing to 
decide. It is a very grave thing. As in the case of the 
sculptress I thought it an error of judgment on her part, 
and on my own it would be criminal.” 

“That’s a fine bit of fiction,” said Sanborn. “You’re 
too rough on yourself, for you could do the girl a deal 
of good by marrying her.” 

“ Possibly. In the case of the sculptress the problem 
is different. She is moving past me like a queen — 
splendid, supple, a smile of conscious power on her lips, 
the light of success in her eyes. It’s a terrible tempta- 
tion, I admit, this power to stretch out my hand and 
stay her. It makes my blood leap, but my sense of 
justice will not allow of it. I shall let her pass on, 
beautiful and rapt.” 

“To marry some confounded pinhead, who will 
make her a domestic animal, and degrade her into ^ my 
wife, gents ’ ? ” 

“Possibly. However, my responsibility ends where 
I say good-by.” 

“Don’t shirk — don’t shirk,” 


Mason Talks Again 275 

Mason turned on him. His voice lost a little of its 
coldness. 

‘‘ Is a man to have no credit for letting such a 
glorious creature pass him, unharmed and free ? ” 

“ Why yes, certainly. But the world of art will not 
satisfy that girl. She’s sure to marry — she must marry 

— and she is entitled to more consideration. You’ve 
got to look ahead to the time when she regrets the lack 
of husband and children.” 

“ Ah, but it’s a frightful thing, Sanborn, to arrest that 
girl, to make her a wife and mother, to watch her grow 
distorted, stiffened, heavy with child-bearing. I prefer 
to see her pass me, in order that I may remember her, 
rosy, radiant, moving like music and light.” 

“ That’s fine. Mason, I honor you for that spirit,” 
said Sanborn, deeply moved. “ But you must remem- 
ber that I am about to be married to a beautiful woman 
myself, a woman who knows both sexes, knows their 
vices and passions. She tells me, and it fits in with 
what I know myself, that the woman’s nature moves on 
from this beautiful state you’ve described so well, into 
the pain and responsibility of marriage not merely will- 
ingly, but eagerly. Half the girl’s joy, which we men 
see in her face, is the smile of anticipated motherhood 

— it must be so. Isabel, as you know, is no sentimen- 
talist; she’s a woman you can talk these things to, 
freely. I can’t state it as she did, but the substance of 
it was this : if the girl knew she was to be always 
young and childish, her youth and beauty would have 
no value to her — that it is the untried pain and pleasure 


276 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

of other years and conditions which make the beauty so 
radiant now.” 

Mason was instant in reply. “ All of which merely 
means she makes the best of an irresistible and tragic 
impulse, a force which she does not originate and can- 
not control. Therefore I say it is a sorrowful business 
to hew down a temple or tear a lily in pieces.” 

The two men were silent again. They had reached 
fundamentals in their talk. Sanborn considered the 
whole matter an allegory, which Mason was using to 
veil his design to win Rose if possible. He knew the 
ease of his host’s invention, as well as his power to 
present a case dramatically, and while he was moved 
by the expression of a noble thought, he could not 
think that there was any exact truth contained in the 
story. 

Mason resumed a moment later : 

“ There are certain other material, minor, and prosaic 
considerations which must be kept in mind. Suppose I 
announce my engagement to Miss Aurelia; the news- 
papers would have a pleasant paragraph or two. Some 
people would say, ‘ What a very appropriate match.’ 
Others would say, very knowingly, ‘Well, Mason has 
feathered his nest.’ The newspaper boys who really 
wish me well would say, ‘ Good for Mason ; now he 
can take time to finish that great American novel he’s 
had on hand so long ! ’ A few shrewd fellows would 
say, ‘Well, that ends Mason! He’s naturally lazy, and 
with a wife and home like that he’ll never do another 
stroke of work. Mason’s like Coleridge in one thing : 


Mason Talks Again 277 

he dreams great things, but never writes them. He’s out 
of the race ! ’ ” 

“ There’s something in that,” Sanborn admitted. 

‘‘ I know there is,” Mason replied, without offence. 
“ Now we’ll suppose I scrape a little money together for 
immediate use. The old railway Baron is kind. He 
tolerates me for the daughter’s sake. I come in contact 
with the relatives ; already I have had a touch of them ! 
A girl like that is not like a pebble on the seashore ; 
she’s a thread in a web of cloth, a silken thread in a 
breadth of shoddy, maybe. You can’t marry her and 
have her to yourself. You come into new relations 
with her people as her fiance. They cannot be escaped. 
They swarm around you. They question your motives 
and they comment on your person : ‘ He’s getting bent 
and bald ; ’ ‘ He’s lazy ; ’ ‘ What did she ever see in 
him ’ They vulgarize everything they touch. They 
are as tiresome as the squeal of a pump, but there you 
are, you must meet them. The old gentleman is a man 
who deals in millions, reliable and conscientious. He 
talks to you about his business, till you say, ‘ business 
be damned.’ He thereafter meets you in heavy silence. 
The mother is a timid soul, with an exaggerated idea of 
your importance as an editor. The aunts and uncles 
variously sniff and tremble before you.” 

“ Meanwhile your wife has talked over all she knows, 
and all she says thereafter has a familiar sound. She 
delights in stories with many repetitions in them. Her 
little brain travels from the pantry to the table, from the 

tea-table to the children’s bath-tub; its widest circuit is 

¥ 


278 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 


the millinery store and the bargain counter. She gets 
fat, that’s another distressing phase of my trouble, let 
me say. I seem to be gifted with a prophetic eye in 

the midst of my transports ” 

“ Think of you in a transport ! ” 

“ I am able to see just how each one will change, 
how this pretty plumpness will get fat, how this delicate 
slimness will get bony. I see how this beautiful alert 
face will get beakish. In other words I am troubled 
about the future, when I should be involved only in the 
ecstasy of the present. In this latest case I see excessive 
plumpness and chatter in ten years. I see myself bored 
to death with her within ten months. She is at her best 
now 5 in striving to win me she is like a female bird, 
her plumage is at its best ; she will grow dowdy when 
the incentive is gone. 

“ There are other considerations. Aurelia, too, has 
exaggerated notions of my power to earn money. She 
may expect me to maintain an expensive establishment. 
I can’t ask anything of the political pirate, her father; 
I can only put my income into the treasury. If my 
power to earn money decreases, as it may, then I be- 
come an object of contempt on the part of the old 
savage, who considers money the measure of ability. 
Suppose at last I come to the point of borrowing money, 
of going to the old man humbly, twisting my hat in my 
hand ; ‘ My dear sir, Aurelia and the children ’ — Pah ! ” 
He uttered a sound of disgust and anger and fell 
silent. 

Sanborn mused, “ I wonder if the lovers of any other 


Mason Talks Again 279 

age had any such scruples about marriage. I guess you’re 
right about Aurelia, but I don’t believe you are about 
the sculptress. I think she would make you happy.” 

Mason mused a moment and then went on : 

“Well, now, as to that — marry her and we plunge, 
inside of two years, into a squalid struggle for bread and 
coal and a roof. I elect myself at once into the ranks 
of dray-horses, and, as I said before, I chain a genius 
to the neck-yoke with me. That is also out of the 
question.” 

Sanborn sought his hat. 

“Well, Mason, this has been a season of plain speak- 
ing. I’d feel pretty bad over it if I thought it was real. 
When you get the whole thing typewritten I should like 
to read it to Isabel and Rose.” 

Mason’s face did not change, but he failed to look at 
his friend. He said, quietly : 

“ Isabel wouldn’t read it ; the girl might possibly find 
something in it of value. Good-night ; you’ve listened 
like a martyr.” 

“ Don’t fail to write that out while it’s fresh in your 
mind. Good-night,” said Sanborn. 

His last glance as he closed the door fell upon a lonely 
figure lying in a low chair before the fire, and he pitied 
him. Mason seemed “ the great irresolute ” which 
Isabel believed him to be ; helpless to do, patient to 
suffer. 


CHAPTER XXII 


SOCIAL QUESTIONS 

The social world seemed about to open to the coolly 
girl. At Mrs. Harvey’s she called, and behold ! her house 
was but one street removed from the Lake Shore Drive, 
on which she had stood that September day. It was a 
home of comfort rather than of wealth, not at all osten- 
tatious, and yet its elegance troubled Rose not a little. 

She knew values by instinct, and she knew there was 
nothing shoddy and nothing carelessly purchased in the 
room. The Harveys were envied by some of their 
wealthier neighbors for the harmoniousness of their 
house. They contrived to make their furniture distin- 
guish itself from a down-town stock — which requires 
taste in selection, and arrangement as well. 

Rose heard voices above, and soon Mrs. Harvey and 
Isabel came down together. Rose was glad of her 
friend’s presence — it made things easier for her. 

After hearty greetings from Mrs. Harvey they all sat 
down and Mrs. Harvey said : 

‘‘I’m glad you came over. We — Isabel and I — 
feel that we should do something for you socially. I 
would like to have you come over some Wednesday and 

280 


28 i 


Social Questions 

pour tea for me. It’s just my afternoon at home, and 
friends drop in and chatter a little while ; perhaps you’d 
enjoy it.” 

“ Oh, you’re very kind ! ” Rose said, dimly divining 
that this was a valuable privilege, “ but I really couldn’t 
do it. I — I’m not up to that.” 

‘‘ Oh, yes, you are. You’d look like a painting by 
Boldini up against that tapestry, with your hair brought 
low, the way you wore it concert night.” 

Isabel put in a word. “ It isn’t anything to scare 
you. Rose. It’s hardly more formal than a college tea, 
only there won’t be so many men. It will introduce 
you to some nice girls, and we’ll all make it as easy for 
you as we can.” 

“ Oh, yes, indeed ; you can sit at the table with 
Isabel.” 

“ Oh, it isn’t that,” Rose said, looking down. “ I 
haven’t anything suitable to wear.” She went on 
quickly, as if to put an end to the whole matter. “ I’m 
a farmer’s girl living on five hundred dollars a year, and 
I can’t afford fifty dollar dresses. I haven’t found out 
any way to earn money yet, and I can’t ask my father 
to buy me clothes to wear at teas. You are all very 
kind to me, but I must tell you that it’s all out of my 
reach.” 

The other women looked at each other while Rose 
hurried through this. Mrs. Harvey was prepared at the 
close : 

“ There, now, my dear ! don’t let that trouble you. 
Any simple little gown will do.” 


282 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 


“ Please don’t tempt me, Mrs. Harvey, until I can 
buy my own dresses. I can’t ask my father to buy 
anything more than is strictly necessary.” 

There was a note in her voice which seemed to settle 
the matter. 

Isabel said, “ Perhaps you have something made up 
that will do. Won’t you let me see what you have ? 
Certainly the dress you wore at the concert became you 
well.” 

“ If you have anything that could be altered,” Mrs. 
Harvey said, “ I have a dressmaker in the house now. 
She could easily do what you need. She’s looking over 
my wardrobe.” 

Rose shook her head, and the tears came to her eyes. 

“You’re very, very kind, but it wouldn’t do any 
good. Suppose I got a dress suitable for this afternoon, 
it wouldn’t help much. It’s impossible. I’d better 
keep in the background where I belong.” 

She stubbornly held to this position and Mrs. Harvey 
reluctantly gave up her plans to do something for her 
socially. 

Rose had come to see how impossible it was for her 
to take part in the society world, which Isabel and 
Mrs. Harvey made possible to her. The winter was 
thickening with balls and parties ; the society columns 
of the Sunday papers were full of “events past,” and 
“events to come.” Sometimes she wished she might see 
something of that life, at other times she cared little. 
One day, when calling upon Isabel, she said, suddenly : 

“ Do you know how my father earns the money which 


Social Questions 283 

I spend for board ? He gets up in the morning, before 
anyone else, to feed the cattle and work in the garden 
and take care of the horses. He wears old, faded clothes, 
and his hands are hard and crooked, and tremble when 
he raises his tea ” 

She stopped and broke into a moan — “ Oh, it makes 
my heart ache to think of him alone up there ! If you 
can help me to earn a living I will bless you. What 
can I do ? I thought I was right, but Mr. Mason made 
me feel all wrong. Fm discouraged now ; why was I 
born ? ” 

Isabel waited until her storm of emotion passed, then 
she said : 

“ Don’t be discouraged yet, and don’t be in haste to 
succeed. You are only beginning to think about your 
place in the economy of things. You are costing your 
father but little now, and he does not grudge it : besides, 
all this is a part of your education. Wait a year and 
then we will see what you had better do to earn a living.” 

They were in her library and Rose sat with her hat 
on ready to go back to her boarding-house. Isabel went 
on, after a time spent in thought : 

“ Now the social question is not so hopeless as you 
think. There are plenty of select fine places for you to 
go without a swagger gown. Of course, there is a very 
small circle here in Chicago, which tries to be ultra- 
fashionable, but it’s rather difficult because Chicago men 
have something else to do and won’l be dragooned into 
studying Ward McAllister. You’ll find the people here 
mostly good, sensible people, like the Harveys, who’ll 


284 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

enjoy you in any nice, quiet dress. You can meet 
them informally at dinner or at their little Sunday 
evening in. So don’t you take any more trouble about 
it,” she ended, “and you needn’t pay me for the lec- 
ture either.” 

Rose answered her, smiling : 

“ I wish I could feel — I wish I didn’t care a cent 
about it, but I do. I don’t like to feel shut out of any 
place. I feel the equal of anyone; I was brought up 
that way, and I don’t like to be on the outside of any- 
thing. That’s a dreadful thing to say, I suppose, but 
that’s the way I feel.” 

“ I’m not going to quarrel with you about the depth 
of your depravity ; but I assure you there is no circle 
in Chicago worth knowing which will shut you out 
because you are a poor girl. Thank heaven, we have 
not reached that point yet. And now about your writ- 
ing. I believe in you. I liked those verses, though I 
may not be an acute critic — Mr. Mason says I’m a 
conservative, and he’s probably right. He says you 
should write as you talk. He told me you had remark- 
able power in suggesting images to the mind, but in 
your verse the images were all second-hand. He be- 
lieves you’ll come to your own themes and style soon.” 

“I hope so.” Her answer was rather spiritless in tone. 

“ There’s another thing. Rose. You’re going to have 
suitors here in Chicago, and fine ones, too. May I talk 
with you about that ? ” 

Rose flushed deeply and her eyes fell ; she was a little 
incoherent. 


Social Questions 285 

“ Why, yes — I don’t see any reason — there isn’t 
any need of secrecy.” 

Isabel studied her from a little distance. 

‘‘ Rose, tell me : how is it that you didn’t marry 
young, as so many poor girls do ? ” 

Rose considered a moment. 

“ I hardly know myself.” 

“You had lovers, always ? ” 

“Yes, always.” 

“ And you had fancies, too ? ” 

“ Oh, yes, as all girls do, I suppose.” 

“ Why didn’t you marry one of these ? ” 

“ Well, for one reason, they didn’t please me well 
enough — I mean long enough. They grew tiresome 
after awhile ; and then I was ambitious, I wanted to get 
out into the world. I couldn’t marry someone who 
would bind me down to the cook-stove all my life, and 
then I had my ideals of what a man should be — and, 
some way, the boys didn’t interest me after awhile.” 

“ I think I understand that. You’re going to marry 
sometime, of course.” 

Rose looked down : “ Why, yes, I suppose so — 

most girls do.” 

“ Don’t think I’m impertinent, will you, but is there 
any — are you bound to anyone ? ” 

Rose lifted her face. 

“No, I am as free as any woman.” 

“ I’m glad of that. Rose. I was afraid you might be 
half-engaged to someone in the college or back in the 
valley. It makes it very fine and simple if you can 


286 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


enter your wider life here, free. You are sure to marry, 
and you ought to marry well.” 

Rose replied, a little disgustedly : 

“ I hate to think of marrying for a home, and I hate 
to think of marrying as a profession. Writers accuse 
us of thinking of nothing else, and I get sick and tired 
of the whole thing. I wish I was just a plain animal 
or had no sex at all. Sometimes I think it is a curse to 
be a woman.” She ended fierce and sullen. 

Isabel shrank a little. 

“ Oh, don't be too hard on me. Rose ! I didn't mean 
to anger you.” 

“ I'm not angry ; the things I want to say I can't 
seem to say. It isn't your fault or mine. It's just fate. 
I hate to think of ‘ marrying well ' ” 

“ I think I understand,” Isabel said, a little appalled 
at the storm she had raised. “ I haven't been troubled 
by that question because I have a profession, and have 
something to think about besides marriage, and still we 
must think about it enough to prepare for it. The 
world must have its wives and mothers. You are to be 
a wife and mother, you are fitted for it by nature. Men 
see that — that is the reason you are never without 
suitors. All I was going to say, dear, was this : you are 
worthy the finest and truest man, for you have a great 
career, I feel sure of it — and so — but no. I'll not 
lecture you another minute. You're a stronger woman 
than I ever was, and I feel you can take care of your- 
self.” 

‘‘ That's just it. I don't feel sure of that yet. I feel 


Social Questions 


287 


dependent upon my father and I ought not to be ; Fm 
out of school, Pm twenty-three years of age, and I want 
to do something. I must do something — and I don’t 
want to marry as a — as a — because I am a failure.” 

‘‘ Nobody wants you to do that. Rose. But you 
didn’t mean that exactly. You mean you didn’t want 
to come to any man dependent. I don’t think you 
will ; you’ll find out your best holt, as the men say, and 
you’ll succeed.” 

Rose looked at her in silence a moment. 

“ Pm going to confess something,” she finally said, 
with a laugh. “ I hate to keep house. I hate to sew, 
and I can’t marry a man who wants me to do the way 
other women do. I must be intended for something 
else than a housewife, because I never do a bit of cook- 
ing or sewing without groaning. I like to paint fences 
and paper walls ; but Pm not in the least domestic.” 

Isabel was amused at the serious tone in which Rose 
spoke. 

“ There is one primal event which can change all 
that. I’ve seen it transform a score of women. It 
will make you domestic, and will turn sewing into a 
delight.” 

‘‘ What do you mean ? ” asked Rose, though more 
than half guessing. 

“ I mean motherhood.” 

The girl shrank, and sat silent, as if a doom had been 
pronounced upon her. 

“That is what marriage must mean to you and to 
me,” Isabel said, and her face had an exultant light in 


288 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


it. “ I love my profession — I am ambitious in it, 
but I could bear to give it all up a hundred times over, 
rather than my hope of being a mother.” 

The girl w^as awed almost into whispering. 

“ Does it mean that — will it take away your power 
as a physician ? ” 

“ No, that^s the best of it these days. If a woman 
has brains and a good man for a husband, it broadens 
her powers. I feel that Dr. Sanborn and I will be 
better physicians by being father and mother. Oh, 
those are great words. Rose ! Let me tell you they are 
broader than poet or painter, deeper than wife or hus- 
band. I’ve wanted to say these things to you. Rose. 
You’ve escaped reckless marriage someway, now let me 
warn you against an ambitious marriage ” 

She broke off suddenly. “ No, I’ll stop. You’ve 
taken care of yourself so far; it would be strange if you 
couldn’t now.” She turned quickly and went to Rose. 
“I love you,” she said. “We are spiritual sisters, I 
felt that the day you crushed me. I like women who 
do not cry. I want you to forgive me for lecturing you, 
and I want you to go on following the lead of your 
mysterious guide ; I don’t know what it is or, rather, 
who he is ” 

She stopped suddenly, and seating herself on the arm 
of Rose’s chair, smiled. 

“ I believe it is a man, somewhere. Come now, 
confess — who is he ” 

Quick as light the form and face of William De Lisle 
came into Rose’s thought, and she said ; 


289 


Social Questions 

“ He’s a circus rider.” 

Isabel unclasped Rose’s arm and faced her. 

“ A circus rider ! ” 

Rose colored hotly and looked away. 

“I — can’t tell you about it — you’d laugh and 

well, I don’t care to explain.” 

Isabel looked at her with comical gravity. 

‘‘ Do you know what you’ve done, ‘ coolly ’ girl ? You 
know the common opinion of woman’s curiosity ? I 
don’t believe a woman is a bit more curious than a man, 
only a woman is curious about things he isn’t. I’m 
suffering agonies this minute. You know I’m an 
alienist. I’ve studied mad people so much I know 
just what sends them off. You’ve started me. If you 
don’t explain at once — ” She went to the door and 
called, “ Etta ! Don’t disturb me, no matter who comes.” 

“ Now tell me about it,” she said, as she sat down 
beside Rose and studied her with avid eyes. 

“ Why, it’s nothing,” Rose began. “ I never spoke 
to him, and he never even saw me, and I never saw 
him but once ” 

“ And yet he influenced your whole life ? ” 

Rose mused a moment. 

“Yes, I can see it now — I never realized it before 
— he has helped me all my life.” 

She told of her first sight of him, of her long ride 
home, of her thoughts of him, reserving something, of 
course, and her voice grew husky with remembered 
emotion. She uttered more than she knew. She 
showed the keen little woman at her side the more 


290 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


imaginative side of her nature. It became evident to 
Isabel that the beautiful poise of the head and supple 
swing of the girl’s body was in part due to the sugges- 
tion of the man’s perfect grace. His idealized face had 
made the commonplace apparent — had led her, lifted 
her. 

“ Why, it’s all a poem ! ” she exclaimed at the end. 
“ It’s magnificent ; and you thought I’d laugh ! ” She 
looked reproachful. “ I think it’s incredibly beautiful. 
What was his name ? We may meet him some 
time ” 

Rose drew back and grew hot with a blush. 

“Oh, no — I don’t want to see him now. I’m 
afraid he wouldn’t seem the same to me now.” 

Isabel considered. “You’re right ! He never really 
existed. He was a product of your own sweet girlish 
imagination, but let me tell you — ” she made a swift 
feminine turn to the trivial, “You’ll marry a tall, lathy 
man, or a short, dumpy man. You never can marry a 
handsome man. That’s the way things go. Really I 
must keep Doctor and Mason out of the house.” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


A STORM AND A HELMSMAN 

In quiet wise her winter wore on. In a few months 
the home feeling began to make itself felt, and the city 
grew correspondingly less appalling, though hardly less 
oppressive. There were moments when it seemed the 
most splendid presence in the world — at sunset, when 
the river was crowded with shipping and the great 
buildings loomed up blue as wood-smoke, and almost 
translucent ; when the brick walls grew wine-colored ; 
when the river was flooded with radiance from the 
western sun, and the great steamers lay like birds 
wearied and dreaming after a long journey. 

Sometimes, too, at night, when she came out of the 
concert hall and saw the glittering twin tiaras of burn- 
ing gold which the Great Northern towers held against 
the blue-black, starless sky, two hundred feet above the 
pavement ; or when in the early evening she approached 
the mountainous Temple, luminous and sparkling with 
electric lights, lifting a lighted dome as airy as a bubble 
three hundred feet into the pale sapphire of the cloud- 
less sky — the city grew lofty. 

The gross, the confused in line, the prosy in color, 
291 


292 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

disappeared at such moments, and the city, always vast, 
took on grace and charm and softened to magnificence ; 
became epic, expressing in prophecy that which it must 
attain to ; expressed the swift coming in of art and 
poetry in the lives of the western world-builders. 

She grew with it all ; it deepened her conception of 
life, but she could not write of it for the reason that it 
was too near and too multiple in its appeal upon her. 
She strove daily to arrange it in her mind, to put it into 
form, and this striving wore upon her severely. She lost 
some of her superb color and physical elasticity because 
of it, and became each week a little less distinctive 
exteriorly, which was a decided loss. Mason told Isabel. 

“ She isn’t losing anything very real,” Isabel said. 
“ She’s just as unaccountable as ever. She goes out 
much less than you imagine. I take her out, and send 
her, all I can to keep her from getting morbid. Why 
don’t you come oftener and help me ? ” 
“Self-protection,” said Mason. 

“ Are you afraid of a country girl ? ” 

“Oh, no — afraid of myself.” 

“ How much do you mean of that, Warren ? ” 

“ All of it.” 

She wrinkled her brow in disgust of his concealing 
candor. 

“ Oh, you are impossible in that mood ! ” 

As the winter deepened Rose narrowed the circle of 
conquest. She no longer thought of conquering the 
world ; it came to be the question of winning the ap- 
probation of one hunaan soul. That is, she wished to 


A Storm and a Helmsman 293 

win the approbation of the world in order that Warren 
Mason might smile and say “ Well done ! ” 

She did not reach this state of mind smoothly and 
easily. On the contrary, she had moments when she 
rebelled at the thought of any man’s opinion being the 
greatest good in the world to her. She rebelled at the 
implied inferiority of her position in relation to him and 
also at the physical bondage implied. In the morning 
when she was strong, in the midst of some social suc- 
cess, when people swarmed about her and men bent 
deferentially, then she held herself like a soldier on a 
tower defying capture. 

But at night, when the lights were all out, when she 
felt her essential loneliness and weakness and need — 
when the world seemed cold and cruel and selfish, then 
it seemed as if the sweetest thing in the universe would 
be to have him open his arms and say ‘‘ Come ! ” 

There would be rest there and repose. His judg- 
ment, his keen wit, his penetrating, powerful influence, 
made him seem a giant to her, a giant who disdained 
effort and gave out an appearance of indifference and 
lassitude. She had known physical giants in her neigh- 
borhood who spoke in soft drawl, and slouched lazily in 
action, but who were invincible when aroused. 

She imagined Mason as a mental giant, who assumed 
irresolution and weakness for reasons of his own. He 
was always off duty when she saw him, and bent 
more upon rest than a display of power — but once or 
twice she saw him roused, and was thrilled by the 
change ; that measured lazy roll of voice changed to a 


294 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 


quick, stern snarl, the brows lowered and the big, plump 
face took on battle lines. It was like a seemingly 
shallow pool suddenly disclosed to be of soundless 
depths by a wind of passion. It was over in a moment, 
but Mason stood revealed to her. 

The lake had been the refuge of the distracted and 
restless girl. She went to it often in the autumn days, 
for it rested her from the noise of grinding wheels, and 
screams and yells. Its smooth rise and fall, its sparkle 
of white-caps, its sailing gulls, filled her with delicious 
pleasure. It soothed her and it roused her also. It 
gave her time to think. 

The street disturbed her, left her purposeless and 
powerless, but out there where the ships floated like 
shadows, and shadows shifted like flame, and the wind 
was keen and sweet — there she regained her mental 
breath again. She watched the water change to wintry 
desolation, till it grew empty of vessels and was lonely 
as the Arctic sea, but always its color and reach inspired 
her thought. 

She went out one day in March when the home long- 
ing was upon her and when it seemed that the city 
would be her death. She was tired of her food, tired of 
Mary, tired of her room. Her forehead was knotted 
tensely with pain of life and love. 

She cried out with sudden joy, for she had never seen 
the lake more beautiful. Near the shore a great mass of 
churned and heaving ice and snow lay like a robe of 
shaggy fur. Beyond this the deep water spread a vivid 
pea-green broken by wide, irregular strips of dark purple. 


A Storm and a Helmsman 


295 

In the open water by the wall a spatter of steel-blue lay 
like the petals of some strange flower, scattered upon the 
green. 

Great splendid clouds developed, marvellously like the 
clouds of June, making the girl’s heart swell with 
memories of summer. They were white as wool, these 
mountainous masses, but bottomed in violet, and as they 
passed the snow-fields they sent down pink-purple, misty 
shadows, which trailed away in splendor toward the green 
which flamed in bewildering beauty beyond. The girl 
sat like one in a dream while the wind blew the green 
and purple of the outer sea into fantastic, flitting forms 
which dazzled her eyes like the stream of mingled 
banners. 

Each form seemed more beautiful than the preceding 
one ; each combination had such unearthly radiance, her 
heart ached with exquisite sorrow to see it vanish. 
Spring was coming on the wing of the southern wind, 
and the desire to utter her passion, grew almost into 
pain. 

It had other moods, this mighty spread of water. It 
could be angry, dangerous. Sometimes it rolled sullenly, 
convoluting in oily surges beneath its coverlid of snow, 
like a bed of monstrous serpents. Sometimes the leaden 
sky shut down over it, and from the desolate northeast 
a snowstorm rushed, hissing and howling. Sometimes 
it slumbered for days, quiet as a sleeping boa, then awoke 
and was a presence and a voice in the night, fit to make 
the hardiest tremble. 

Rose saw it when it was roused, but she had yet to 


Rose of Butcher's Coolly 


296 

see it in a frenzy. The knowledge of its worst came to 
her early in May. The day broke with the wind in the 
northeast. Rose, lying in her bed, could hear the roar 
of the breakers ; never before had their tumult penetrated 
so far. She sprang up and dressed, eager to see the lake 
in such a mood. Mary responded sleepily to her call, 
saying it would be there after breakfast. 

Rose did not regret her eagerness, though it was 
piercingly cold and raw. The sea was already terrific. 
Its spread of tawny yellow showed how it had reached 
down and laid hold on the sand of its bed. There were 
oily splotches of plum-color scattered over it where the 
wind blew it smooth and it reached to the wild eastern 
sky, cold, desolate, destructive. 

It had a fierce, breathing snarl like a monster at meat. 
It leaped against the sea-wall like a rabid tiger, its sleek 
and spotted hide rolling. Every surge sent a triangular 
sheet of foam high above the wall, yellow and white, and 
shadowed with dull blue ; and the wind caught it as it 
rose, and its crest burst into great clouds of spray, which 
sailed across the streets and dashed along the walk like 
rain, making the roadway like a river; while the main 
body of each up-leaping wave, falling back astride the 
wall, crashed like the fall of glass, and the next wave 
meeting it with a growl of thunderous rage, struck it 
with concave palm, with a sound like a cannon’s ex- 
ploding roar. 

Out of the appalling obscurity to the north frightened 
ships scudded at intervals with bare masts bending like 
fire-trimmed pines. They hastened like homing pigeons 


A Storm and a Helmsman 297 

which do not look behind. The helmsmen stood grimly 
at their wheels, with eyes on the harbor ahead. 

The girl felt the terror of it all as no one native to 
the sea can possibly do. It seemed as if the bounds of 
the flood had been overcome, and that it was about to 
hurl itself upon the land. The slender trees standing 
deep in the swash of water, bowed like women in pain ; 
the wall was half hidden. The water and the land 
seemed mingled in battle. 

Rose walked along the drive, too much excited to go 
back to her breakfast. At noon she ate lunch hurriedly 
and returned to the shore. There were hundreds of 
people coming and going along the walk; young girls 
shrieking with glee, as the sailing clouds of spray fell 
upon them. Rose was angry to think they could be so 
silly in face of such dreadful power. 

She came upon Mason, dressed in a thick mackintosh 
coat, taking notes rapidly in a little book. He did not 
look up and she passed him, wishing to speak, yet afraid 
to speak. Near him a young man was sketching. 

Mason stood like a rock in his long, closefitting rain- 
coat while she was blown nearly off her feet by the blast. 
She came back against the wind, feeling her soul’s in- 
ternal storm rising. It seemed quite like a proposal of 
marriage to go up and speak to him — yet she could not 
forego the pleasure. 

He did not see her until she came into his lee, then 
he smiled, extending his hand. She spoke first : 

“ May I take shelter here ? ” 

His eyes lightened with a sudden tender humor. 


298 Rose of Dutcher s Coolly 

“ Free anchorage,” he said, and drew her by the hand 
closer to his shoulder. It was a beautiful moment to 
her, and a dangerous one to him. He took refuge in 
outside matters. 

“ How does that strike your inland eyes .? ” He 
pointed to the north. 

“ It’s awful. It’s like the anger of God.” She spoke 
into his bowed ear. 

‘‘ Please don’t think I’m reporting it,” he explained. 
“ I’m only making a few notes about it for an editorial 
on the needs of harbors.” Each moment the fury 
increased, the waves deepened. The commotion sank 
down amid the sands of the deeper inshore water, till it 
boiled like milk and wine. Splendid colors grew into it 
near at hand j the winds tore at the tops of the waves, 
and wove them into tawny banners which blurred in the 
air like blown sand. On the horizon the waves leaped 
in savage ranks, clutching at the sky like insane sea- 
monsters, frantic, futile. 

‘‘ I’ve seen the Atlantic twice during a gale,” shouted 
the artist to a companion, “ but I never saw anything 
more awful than this. These waves are quicker and 
higher. I don’t see how a vessel could live in it if 
caught broadside.” 

“ It’s the worst I ever saw here.” 

“ I’m going down to the South Side ; would you like 
to go ? ” Mason asked of Rose. 

“ I would, indeed,” she replied. 

Back from the Lake Shore the wind was less powerful 
but more uncertain. It came in gusts which nearly up- 


A Storm and a Helmsman 


299 

turned the street-cars. Men and women scudded from 
shelter to shelter like people of a leaguered city avoiding 
cannon shots. 

“ What makes our lake so terrible,” said Mason, in 
the car, “ is the fact that it has a smooth shore — no 
indentations, no harbors. There is only one harbor here 
at Chicago, behind the breakwater, and every vessel in 
mid-lake must come here. Those flying ships are seek- 
ing safety behind it like birds. The harbor will be full 
of disabled vessels.” 

As they left the car a roaring gust swept around a 
twenty-story building with such power that Rose would 
have been taken off her feet had not Mason put his arm 
about her shoulders. 

“You’re at a disadvantage,” he said, “with skirts.” 
He knew she prided herself on her strength, and he took 
no credit to himself for standing where she fell. 

It was precisely as if they were alone together ; the 
storm seemed to wall them in, and his manner was more 
intimate than ever before. It was in very truth the first 
time they had been out together, and also it was the only 
time he had assumed any physical care of her. He had 
never asserted his really great muscular power and mas- 
tery of material things, and she was amazed and deeply 
pleased to know his lethargy was only a mood and that 
he could be alert and agile at need. It made his cyni- 
cism appear to be a mood also j at least, her heart was 
made wondrously light in thinking so. 

They came upon the Lake Shore again, near the Audi- 
torium. The refuge behind the breakwater was full of 


300 Rose of Dutcher's Coolly 

boats, straining at anchor, rolling, pitching, crashing 
together. Close about the edge of the breakwater, ships 
were rounding hurriedly, and two broken vessels lay 
against the shore, threshing up and down in the awful 
grasp of the breakers. Far down toward the south the 
water dashed against the spiles, shooting mast high above 
the wall, sailing like smoke, deluging the street, and 
lashing against the row of buildings across the way. 
Mason's keen eye took in the situation. 

“ Every vessel that breaks anchor is doomed ! Noth- 
ing can keep them from going on shore. Doubtless 
those two schooners lost anchor — that two-master is 
dragging anchor.” He said, suddenly, “ She is shifting 
position, and see that hulk ! ” 

Rose for a moment could not see it. It lay flat on 
its side, a two-master, its sails flapping and floating on 
the waves. Its anchor still held, but it had listed its 
cargo, careened, and so lay helpless. 

“ There are men on it ! ” cried someone. “ Three 
men — don’t you see them ? The water goes over 
them every time ! ” 

“ Sure enough ! I wonder if they are going to let 
them drown, here in the harbor ! ” 

Rose grew numb with horror. On the rounded side 
of the floating hulk three men were clinging, looking 
like pegs of tops. They could only be seen at intervals, 
for the water broke clear over their heads. It was only 
when one of them began to move to and fro that the 
mighty crowd became certainly aware of human beings 
still clinging to the hull. 


A Storm and a Helmsman 


301 


It was an awful thing to stand helplessly by, and see 
those brave men battle, but no life-boat or tug could 
live out there. In the station men wept and impre- 
cated in their despair — twice they tried to go to the 
rescue of the beleaguered men, but could not reach 
them. 

Suddenly a flare of yellow spread out on the wave. 
A cry arose : 

“ She’s breaking up ! ” 

Rose seized Mason’s arm in a frenzy of horror. 

“ O God ! can’t somebody help them ? ” 

‘‘ They’re out of reach ! ” said Mason, solemnly. 
And then the throng was silent. 

“ They are building a raft ! ” shouted a man with a 
glass, speaking at intervals for the information of all. 
“ One man is tying a rope to planks ... he is helping 
the other men ... he has his little raft nearly ready 
. . . they are crawling toward him ” 

“ Oh, see them ! ” exclaimed Rose. “ Oh, the brave 
men ! There ! they are gone — the vessel has broken 
up.” 

On the wave nothing now swam but a yellow spread 
of lumber ; the glass revealed no living thing. 

Mason turned to Rose with a grave and tender look. 

“ You have seen human beings engulfed like 
flies ” 

‘‘ No ! no ! There they are ! ” shouted a hundred 
voices, as if in answer to Mason’s words. 

Thereafter the whole great city seemed to be watch- 
ing those specks of human life, drifting toward almost 


302 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


certain death upon the breakwater of the south shore. 
For miles the beach was clustered black with people. 
They stood there, it seemed for hours, watching the 
slow approach of that tiny raft. Again and again the 
waves swept over it, and each time that indomitable man 
rose from the flood and was seen to pull his companions 
aboard. 

Other vessels drifted upon the rocks. Other steamers 
rolled heavily around the long breakwater, but nothing 
now distracted the gaze of the multitude from this appal- 
ling and amazing struggle against death. Nothing ? 
No, once and only once did the onlookers shift their 
intent gaze, and that was when a vessel passed the 
breakwater and went sailing toward the south through 
the fleet of anchored, straining, agonized ships. At 
first no one paid close attention to this late-comer. 
Mason lifted his voice. 

“ By Heaven, the man is sailing ! ” 

It was true ; steady, swift, undeviating, the vessel 
headed through the fleet. She did not drift nor wander 
nor hesitate. She sailed as if the helmsman, with set 
teeth was saying : 

“ By God ! If I must die on the rocks, I go to my 
death the captain of my vessel ! ” 

And so, with wheel in his hand and epic oaths on his 
lips, he sailed directly into the rocky walls, over which 
the waves ran like hell-hounds ; where half a score of 
wrecks lay already churning into fragments in the awful 
tumult. 

The sailing vessel seemed not to waver, nor seek nor 


A Storm and a Helmsman 303 

dodge — seemed rather to choose the most deadly battle- 
place of waves and wall. 

“ God ! but that’s magnificent of him ! ” Mason said 
to himself. 

Rose held her breath, her face white and set with 
horror. 

“ Oh, must he die ? ” 

“There is no hope for him. She will strike in a 
moment — she strikes ! — she is gone ! ” 

The vessel entered the gray confusion of the breakers 
and struck the piles like a battering ram; the waves 
buried her from sight ; then the recoil flung her back ; 
for the first time she swung broadside to the storm. 
The work of the helmsman was over. She reeled — 
resisted an instant, then submitted to her fate, crumpled 
against the pitiless wall like paper and thereafter was 
lost to sight. 

This dramatic and terrible scene had held the atten- 
tion of the onlookers for nearly a quarter of an hour 
— once more they searched for the tiny raft. It 
was nearing the lake-wall at another furious point 
of contact. An innumerable crowd spread like a 
black robe over the shore waiting to see the tiny 
float strike. 

A hush fell over every voice. Each soul was solemn 
as if facing the Maker of the world. Out on the point, 
just where the doomed sailors seemed like to meet their 
death, there was a little commotion. A tiny figure was 
seen perched on one of the spiles. Each wave, as it 
towered above him, seemed ready to sweep him away. 


304 Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly 

but each time he bowed his head and seemed to sweep 
through the gray wall. He was a negro, and he held a 
rope in his hands. 

As they comprehended his danger and his daring, the 
crowd cheered him, but in the thunder of the surf no 
human voice could avail. The bold black could not 
cry out, he could only motion, but the brave captain of 
the raft understood — he was alone with the shipwrecked 
ones. 

In they came, lifted and hurled by a prodigious swell. 
They struck the wall just beneath the negro and dis- 
appeared beneath the waves. 

All seemed over, and some of the spectators fell 
weeping ; others turned away. 

Suddenly the indomitable commander of the raft rose, 
then his companions, and it was perceived that he had 
bound them all to the raft. 

The negro flung his rope and one man caught at it, 
but was swept out of reach on a backward leaping bil- 
low. Again they came in, their white, strained, set 
faces and wild eyes turned to their intrepid rescuer. 
Again they struck, and this time the negro caught and 
held one of the sailors, held him while the foam fell 
away, and the succeeding wave swept him over the 
spiles to safety. Again the resolute man flung his 
noose and it was caught by the second sailor, whose rope 
was cut by the leader, the captain, who was last to be 
saved. 

As the negro came back, dragging his third man over 
the wall, a mighty cry went up, a strange, faint, multi- 


A Storm and a Helmsman 305 

tudinous cry, and the negro was swallowed up in the 
multitude. 

* :f: 

Mason turned to Rose and spoke : “ Sometimes men 
seem to be worth while ! ” 

Rose was still clinging to his arm as they walked 
away. Mason did not speak again for some time. 

“We have suffered in vain,” he said at last, “and you 
are cold and stiffened with long standing. Let me put 
you in a cab and ” 

“ Oh, no, thank you ! The walk will do me good.” 

“ Perhaps you are right. Til go with you to the car, 
and then I must go to my desk for six hours of hard 
work. Put this behind you,” he said, tenderly. “ It 
does no good to suffer over the inevitable. Forget those 
men ! ” 

“ I can’t ! I shall never forget them while I live. It 
was awful ! ” She shuddered, but when she looked into 
his face she nearly cried out in astonishment at the light 
in his eyes. His voice was solemn as he said : 

“ It had its grandeur. They went to their death like 
men. They have taught me a lesson. Hitherto I have 
drifted — henceforth I sail!"' He bent to her with 
a mystical smile. 

She drew away in a sort of awe as if she looked 
unworthily upon a sacred place. He misunderstood her 
action and said, “ Don’t be afraid. I have something 
to say to you, but not here; perhaps I’ll write it. 
When do you go ? ” 

“ On Saturday.” 


3o 6 Rose of Dutcher s Coolly 

‘‘ I will write you soon. Good-by.” 

She watched him as he moved away into the crowd, 
powerful, erect — the desk-man’s droop gone out of his 
shoulders. What did he mean ? 

She was standing waiting for a chance to board a 
State Street car when Elbert Harvey came pushing along 
against the wind, fresh and strong and glowing with 
color like a girl. 

“ Oh, Fve been looking for you. Rose,” he cried, 
breathlessly. “ I was at your house. They said 
you were over on the lake front and so — See here ! 
You’re all wet and cold. I’m going to get a car- 
riage.” 

He would not be gainsaid, and she was really glad to 
escape the crowd in the car. He said : “ I’m going to 
take you home to get warm.” 

She allowed herself to be driven to the door before 
she realized what it might be taken to mean, but it was 
then too late to insist upon being driven home, it would 
do no harm to see Mrs. Harvey for a moment — and 
then she was so tired — too tired to resist. 

Mrs. Harvey met her in the hall, smiling and scold- 
ing : 

“Why you reckless girl! Have you been down 
town ? Elbert, where did you get her ? ” 

“ I found her on the street waiting for a car — 
shivering, too.” 

“ Why, you’re all wet I Come up to my room and 
change your shoes.” 

The warm air and the glow of the beautiful rooms 


A Storm and a Helmsman 


307 


seemed to narcotize Rose, and she allowed herself to be 
led away like a sleepy child. It was delicious to be so 
attended. Mrs. Harvey took her to her own room, 
a room as big and comfortable and homey as herself, 
and there she put Rose down before the grateful fire 
and rang for her maid. 

‘‘ Annette, remove Mademoiselle’s shoes and give her 
some slippers.” 

The deft girl removed Rose’s wraps, then her shoes, 
while Mrs. Harvey knelt by her side and felt of her 
stocking soles. 

“They’re wet, just as I expected.” She said, joy- 
fully, “ Take them off! ” 

“ Oh, no ! They’ll dry in a minute.” 

“ Take them off, Annette,” commanded Mrs. Har- 
vey. “ Oh, what lovely feet and ankles ! ” she said, 
and so betrayed her not too subtle design to Rose. 

Rose was passive now, and yielded to the manipula- 
tions of the two women. They all had a gale of fun 
over the difference between Mrs. Harvey’s stockings 
and her own, and then they brought out a fantastic pair 
of slippers and a beautiful wrap, which Mrs. Harvey 
insisted upon putting about her. 

Elbert knocked on the door. 

“ Can’t I come in and share the fun, Caroline ? ” 

“ In a moment ! ” she replied, and finished tucking 
the robe about Rose. “ Now you may.” 

Elbert came in, radiant, unabashed, smiling, almost 
grinning his delight. He had changed his dress to a 
neat and exquisitely fitting dark suit, and he looked 


3o 8 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

very handsome indeed. His cheeks were like peaches, 
with much the same sort of fuzz over them. 

He took a place near the fire where he could see 
Rose, and he signalled to his mother at the earliest 
chance that she was stunning. 

Rose lay back in the chair with the robe drawn about 
her, looking the grande dame from the crown of her 
head to the tasselled toes of her slippers. She might 
almost have been Colombe on the eve of her birth- 
day. 

It was delicious, and she had neither heart nor resolu- 
tion at the moment to throw off this homage. She 
knew that Mrs. Harvey was misreading her acquies- 
cence, and that every moment she submitted to her care 
and motherly direction, involved her, enmeshed her. 
But it was so delicious to be a princess and an heiress — 
for an hour. 

The whole situation was intensified when Mr. Har- 
vey’s soft tender voice called from below. 

“ Where is everybody ? ” 

“ Come up ; here we are ! There’s somebody here 
you’ll want to see.” 

Mr. Harvey came in smiling, looking as calm and 
contained as if he were just risen from sleep. He was 
almost as exquisitely dressed as his son. 

“Well! Well I This is a pleasure,” he cordially 
exclaimed. “What’s the meaning of the wrap; not 
sick ? ” 

“ Elbert picked her up on the street, wet and shiver- 
ing, waiting for a car, and brought her home.” 


A Storm and a Helmsman 


309 


‘‘Quite right. We’re always glad to see you. Did you 
give her a little cordial, Caroline ? In case of cold ” 

Rose protested. “I’m not sick, Mr. Harvey, only 
tired. I’ve been out all the day watching the dreadful 
storm. I saw those ships go on the rocks. Oh, it was 
dreadful ! ” 

“ Did you see the three men on the raft ” asked 
Elbert. 

Rose shuddered. How far away she was from that 
cold, gray tumult of water. Of what manner of men 
were they who could battle so heroically for hours in the 
freezing sleet ? 

“Well, now, we won’t talk about the storm any 
more,” Mrs. Harvey interposed. “ It does no good, 
and Rose has had too much of it already. Besides, it’s 
almost dinner-time, Mr. Harvey. Go dress ! ” 

There was not a thread ruffled on Mr. Harvey’s per- 
son, but he dutifully withdrew. He had passed a busy 
day, and had transacted business which affected whole 
states by its influence, yet he was quiet, cordial, ex- 
quisite. 

“ What does this mean, my dear ? ” he asked of Mrs. 
Harvey, who followed him out. 

“ It may mean a great deal, Willis,” she said. “ All 
I know is Elbert brought her home, his eyes shining 
with delight.” 

“ Not to be wondered at,” Mr. Harvey replied. 
“ I’m only ^afraid of actresses,” he added, a little in- 
coherently, but his wife understood him. 

Elbert was not lacking in adroitness. He did not 


jio Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

presume on his position during his mother’s absence. 
He remained standing in the same position. 

“ How do you like coddling ? Now, you see what I 
get when I dare to sneeze. Caroline will coddle any- 
one into regular sickness if you let her.” 

“ I was chilled, but I am not sick in the least.” 

“You’d better straighten up and shout at her when 
she comes in, or she’ll be for sending your dinner up to 
you, and I don’t want that.” 

“ Oh, I must go home now.” 

“ Not till after dinner.” 

“ I’m not — dressed for dinner.” 

“There’s nobody here but ourselves. You must stay.” 

Everyone seemed determined to press her into a false 
position, and there was so little chance to throw the 
influence off. 

She rose out of her cloak, and when Mrs. Harvey 
came back she was standing before the fire with Elbert 
— which seemed also to be significant. 

“ Caroline, don’t coddle Rose any more ; she’s all 
right.” 

Mrs. Harvey accepted this command, because it 
argued a sense of proprietorship on her son’s part. 

Elbert took her down to dinner and placed her near 
him. They continued in intimate talk during the meal. 
A couple of elderly ladies, sisters of Mr. Harvey, occu- 
pied places at the table sitting in meek and shadowy 
way, as if carefully subordinating themselves. They 
had the air of dependent beings and Rose perceived how 
difficult it was to eat the bread of charity and be free. 


A Storm and a Helmsman 31 1 

She felt it her duty to rouse herself to talk, and took 
a small part in the jolly patter between Elbert and his 
mother. Their companionship was very charming — 
so charming one almost forgot the irreverence expressed 
by Elbert’s use of “ Caroline.” 

After dinner Mrs. Emma Seymour Gallup, whom 
Rose had met two or three times but who always 
demanded a new introduction, came whisking in on her 
way to some party. She wore everything in decidedly 
the very latest crimp. Her sleeves did not fit ; her hips 
seemed enormous; her bonnet seemed split on the 
middle of her head, and was symmetrically decked with 
bows of ribbon and glitter and glimmer. Her real pro- 
portions were only to be divined at the waist, all else 
was fibre-cloth and conjecture. 

Her eyes were bright and her face cold and imperious. 
She had once before chilled Rose with a slighting nod 
and an insulting shift of shoulder. She was plainly sur- 
prised to see the girl in the bosom of this family, and 
seized upon the only plausible explanation with instant 
readiness. She had a beautiful smile, and Rose could 
not help seeing that she could be very charming after all. 

“Ah! How do you do Miss Dutcher! I am very 
glad to see you again I ” 

“ Thank you,” Rose replied, simply. 

“You’re quite well? — but then I know you’re well,” 
Mrs. Gallup went on, assuming still greater knowledge 
of her. “ Did you see the storm ? Wasn’t it dreadful I 
I saw it all quite securely from Mrs. Frost’s window. 
How cozy you all look. I wish I could stay, but I just 


312 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

dropped in to ask you to take a seat in my box on 
Saturday night. Bring Miss Butcher — Mr. Gallup 
will be delighted to meet her.” 

All that she said, and more that she implied, enmeshed 
Rose like the folds of an invisible intangible net. 

Mrs. Harvey calmly accepted, but Rose exclaimed: 
“ Oh, you’re very kind, but I am going home on 
Saturday morning ! ” 

“ How sad ! I should have liked to have you come.” 

After she was gone Rose sprang to her feet. “ I 
must go now,” she said, and there was a note in her 
voice which Mrs. Harvey accepted as final. 

As they went upstairs Rose was filled with dread of 
some further complication, but Mrs. Harvey only said : 

“ I love you, my child. I wish you were going to 
stay here always.” 

She left the way open for confidences, but Rose was 
in a panic to get away and kept rigid silence. 

In the carriage she contrived to convey to Elbert her 
desire to be left alone, and he manfully kept back the 
words of love which were bubbling in his good, frank 
soul. He was saddened by it but not made hopeless. 
It would have been a beautiful close to a dramatic day 
could he have kissed her lips and presented her to his 
mother as his promised wife — but it was impossible for 
even his volatile nature to break into her sombre, almost 
sullen, silence; and when he said “ Good-night, Rose! ” 
with tender sweetness she replied, curtly, “ Good-night ! ” 
and fled. 

She hurried past Mary to her own room and lay for 


A Storm and a Helmsman 


313 


hours on her bed, without undressing, listening to the 
howl of the wind, the grind of cars, and the distant boom 
of the breakers. There was a storm in her heart also. 

She thought of that lovely and gentle home, of the 
power wealth would give her, of the journeys into the 
world, of trips to Europe, to the ocean, to Boston and 
New York and London. It could give her a life of ease, 
of power, of grace, and charm. Oh, how beautiful it 
all was, but 

To win it she had to cut off her old father. He 
never could fit in with these people. She thought of 
his meeting with the Harveys with a shudder. Then, 
too, she would need to give up her own striving toward 
independence, for it was plain these people would not 
listen to her continued effort. Even if they consented, 
she would be meshed in a thousand other duties. 

And then she thought of Mason toiling at his desk 
down there in the heart of the terrible town, and the 
look on his face grew less and less imperious and more 
wistful and pleading. This day she had caught a new 
meaning from his eyes — it was as if he needed her; it 
seemed absurd, and she blushed to think it, but so it 
seemed. That last look on his face was the look of a 
lonely man. 

His words came to her again and again : “ Hitherto I 
have drifted — henceforth I sail! ” 

That night she pushed away the splendid dream of a 
life of ease and reached out for comradeship with a man 
of toil, of imagination, and hidden powers. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


MASON TAKES A VACATION 

As Mason walked away from the lake that terrible 
day it seemed as if he had ceased to drift. The spirit 
of that grim helmsman appeared to have entered into 
him. Life was short and pleasures few. For fifteen 
years he had planned important things to do, but had 
never done them — feeling all the time the power to 
write latent within him, yet lacking stimulus. From 
the very first this girl had roused him unaccountably. 
Her sympathy, her imaginative faculty, as well as her 
beauty, had come to seem the qualities which he most 
needed. 

Could he have gone to his own fireside at once, the 
determining letter would have been written that night, 
but the routine of the office, the chaff of his compan- 
ions, took away his heroic mood, and when he entered 
a car at twelve o’clock he slouched in his seat like a 
tired man, and the muscles of his face fell slack and he 
looked like a hopeless man. 

After Rose went home he seemed to Sanborn to be 
more impassible than ever. As for Mason himself, it 
seemed as if some saving incentive — some redeeming 
314 


Mason Takes a Vacation 315 

grace, had gone out of his life. He had grown into the 
habit of dropping in at Isabel’s once a week, and Isabel 
had taken care that Rose should be often there on the 
same evening ; and so without giving much thought to 
it he had come to enjoy these evenings as the most re- 
generating pleasures of his sombre life. 

It was such a delight to come up out of the vicious, 
pitiless grind of his newspaper life and sit before a fire, 
with the face of a radiant girl to smile upon him. Her 
voice, with its curiously penetrating yet musical quality, 
stirred him to new thoughts, and often he went home 
at ten or eleven and wrote, with a feeling of exultant 
power, upon his book. After she left the city he wrote 
no more ; he smoked and pondered. When he called 
upon Isabel and Sanborn he continued to smoke and to 
ponder. 

He had not abandoned his allegory in talking with 
Sanborn, and Sanborn and Isabel together could not get 
at his real feeling for Rose. 

Sanborn one day daringly asked. 

“ Mason, why don’t you marry the ‘ coolly girl,’ and 
begin to live ? ” 

‘‘ It would be taking a mean advantage of her. She’s 
going to be famous one of these days, and then I should 
be in the way.” 

“ Nonsense ! ” 

« Besides, she probably would not marry me ; and if 
she would, I don’t think I could keep up the pose.” 

“ What pose ? ” 

“Of husband.” 


3i6 


Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly 


“ Is that a pose ? ” Sanborn smiled. 

It would be for me,” Mason said, rather shortly. 
He was thinking once more of the letter he had prom- 
ised to write to Rose, but which he had never found 
himself capable of finishing. 

******* 

Isabel and Sanborn were married just before leaving 
the city on their summer vacation in July. 

Sanborn said he had the judge come in to give him 
legal power to compel Isabel to do his cooking for him, 
and Isabel replied that her main reason for submitting 
to a ceremony was to secure a legal claim on Sanborn’s 
practice. 

The wedding was very quiet. Society reporters 
(who did not see it) called it “ an unique affair.” But 
Mason, who did see it, said it was a very simple process, 
so simple it seemed one ought to be able to go through 
it one’s self. To which Sanborn replied: “Quite right. 
Try it ! ” And both invited him to their home at 
Oconomowoc. 

They had a little cottage on the bank of the lake, 
and Sanborn came up on Saturdays with the rest of the 
madly busy men who rest over Sunday and overwork 
the rest of the week. Mason went up late in July, and, 
though he gave no sign, he was nearing a crisis in his 
life. He had gone to the point of finishing his letter to 
Rose — it was lying at that moment in his valise waiting 
to be posted — but it was a long way from being over 
with. It was a tremendous moment for him. As he 
approached the deciding moment the deed grew improb- 


Mason Takes a Vacation 317 

able, impossible. It was a very beautiful life there on 
the lake, with nothing to do but smoke and dream, but 
one evening he had the impulse to ask Isabel's advice, 
and after dinner invited her to sail with him in order to 
be quite alone with her. 

There was some joking by Sanborn about the impro- 
priety of such a thing on Isabel's part, and many offers 
to man the boat, which. Mason said, sprang from jeal- 
ousy. ‘‘ I consider I am doing you people a kindness in 
not letting you bore each other into black hatred." It 
ended in the two friends drifting away over the lake, 
while Sanborn called after them threats of war if they 
were not at the wharf at nine — sharp ! 

They talked commonplaces for a time, while the sky 
flushed and faded and the lake gradually cleared of its 
fisher boats. Slowly the colors grew tender and a subtle. 

An impalpable mist rose from the water, through which 
the boat drifted before an imperceptible breeze. 

The two sailors lay at ease. Mason at the rudder. 

The sail stood up light and airy and soundless as a but- 
terfly's wing. It pointed at the sparse stars as if with 
warning finger. 

The hour and the place were favorable to confidences. 

As the dusk deepened, a boat-load of young people put 
off into the lake, singing some wailing sweet song. 

They were far enough away to be unobtrusively imper- 
sonal. A plover was faintly calling from the sedgy 
shore on the other side. 

“ One should be forever young," said Mason, brood- 1 

ingly. 


3i 8 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

Isabel replied : “ Once I heard a cow low, and a robin 
laugh, while a cricket chirped in the grass. Why should 
they have moved me so ? ” 

Mason mused a moment. ‘‘ The cow was maternity 
pleading for its young ; the robin’s laugh suggested a 
thousand springtimes, and the cricket prophesied the 
coming of frost and age. Love and loss are in the wail 
of yonder song, the loneliness of age in yonder piping 
bird, and the infinite and all-absorbing menstruum of 
death in the growing dusk.” 

“ And the light of man’s optimism in the piercing out 
of the stars.” 

“ It may be so,” he replied, uncertainly. 

They drifted on in silence. There was a faint ripple 
at the prow and that was all. At last Mason roused 
himself to say his word. 

“All these intangible essences and powers are no 
apparent reason why I should do so foolish a thing — 
but they have influenced me. To-day I wrote to our 
coolly girl — I hope to say my coolly girl.” 

Isabel caught her breath. 

“ Warren, did you ? I’m very glad. If I could reach 
you I’d shake your hand.” 

“ I don’t rejoice. This thing which boys and girls 
find easy I find each year more difficult, quite equal to 
the revolution of the earth — perhaps the girl will save 
me from myself.” 

“ She’ll save you for yourself, and you’ll be happy.” 

“ It is impossible to say,” he said, sombrely. “ I have 
warned her fairly. Once I should not have warned the 


Mason Takes a Vacation 319 

woman of my choice. Am I gaining in humanity or 
losing ? Please lower your head, I am going to tack.” 

The boat swung about like a sleeping gull, and the sail 
slowly filled, and the ripple at the prow began again. 

After a pause Mason went on, in a calm even voice : 

“ The world to me is not well governed, and I hesitate 
about marriage, for it has the effect, in most cases, of 
perpetuating the human species, which is not as yet a 
noble business. I am torn by two minds. I don’t 
appear to be torn by even one mind, but I am. I am 
convinced that Rose has imagination, which is in my 
eyes the chief thing in a wife. It enables her to idealize 
me ” — there was a touch of his usual humor in that — 

and fills me with selfish desire to possess her, but it is 
sad business for her, Isabel. When I think of her I am 
of the stature of a thief, crouching for concealment.” 

The two in the boat were no longer young. They 
had never been lovers, but they seemed to understand 
each other like man and wife. 

‘‘ I am old in knowledge of the world — my life has 
ground away any charm I might have once possessed. 
For her sake I hope she will refuse.” 

She perceived he was at the end of his confidence, 
and she began speaking. ‘‘ I promised you a story 
once,” she began, “ and Vm going to tell it now, and 
then we’ll return to Rose.” 

She spoke in a low voice, with a little catching of the 
breath peculiar to her when deeply moved. It made 
her voice pulse out like the flow of heavy wine. She 
faced him in the shadow, but he knew she was not 


320 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

regarding him at all. Just how she began he didn’t 
quite hear — perhaps she was a little incoherent. 

“ Oh, those days when I was seventeen ! ” she went 
on. “ Everything was magical. Every moonlit night 
thrilled me with its possibilities. I remember how the 
boys used to serenade me, and then — I was a mediaeval 
maiden at my barred window and they were disguised 
knights seeking me in strange lands by their songs. 

“You know what I mean. I tingled with the im- 
mense joy of it! They sang there in the moonlight, 
and I tiptoed to the window and peeped out and listened 
and listened with pictures and pictures tumbling in and 
out of my head. 

“ Of course it was only the inherited feminine rising 
up in me, as you would say — but it was beautiful. It 
just glorified that village street, making it the narrow 
way in a Spanish city.” 

There was silence again. Mason softly said : “ Bend 
your head once more.” 

When the boat swung around and the faint moon and 
the lights of the town shifted, Isabel went on. 

“ One of the boys who came on those midnight 
serenadings became my hero — remember, I was only 
seventeen and he was twenty! We used to meet on the 
street — and oh ! how it shook me. My heart fluttered 
so I could not speak, and at first I had to run past 
him. After a time I got composed enough to speak to 
him.” 

Her voice choked with remembered passion, but after 
a little pause she went on : 


Mason Takes a Vacation 


321 


“ All this, I know as well as you, is absurd ” 

“ It is very beautiful,” he said. “ Go on ! ” 

“ He was tall and straight, I remember, with brown 
hair. He was a workman of some kind. I know he 
used to show me his powerful hands and say he had 
tried to get the grime from them. They were splendid, 
heroic hands to me. I would have kissed them if I 
dared. It was all incredible folly, but I thought I was 
loving beneath my station, for I was a little grandee in 
the town. It pleased me to think I was stooping — defy- 
ing the laws of my house. He never tried to see me at 
home — he was good and true — I can see that now, for 
I remember just how his big clear eyes looked at me. He 
didn’t talk much, he seemed content to just look at me.” 

“Well, that went on for weeks. He used to follow 
me to church, as the boys do in country towns, but I 
used to go to different places just to see if he would find 
out and be there to meet me at the door. He never 
offered to speak to me or take my arm, but he stood to 
see me go by. Do you know, if I go into a country 
church to-day, that scent of wilted flowers and linen 
and mingled perfumes almost makes me weep.” 

“ I understand.” 

Her voice was lower when she resumed. 

“Well, then the dreadful, the incredible happened. 
He did not meet me any more, and just when I was wild 
with rage and humiliation came the news of his illness 
— and then I suffered. O God ! how I suffered ! I 
couldn’t inquire about him — I couldn’t see him. I had 
kept my secret so well that no one dreamed of my loving 


322 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


him so. The girls thought that he followed me and that 
I despised him, and when they jested about him I had 
to reply while my heart was being torn out of me. I 
spent hours in my room writhing, walking up and down, 
cursing, in a girl’s way, myself and God — I was in- 
sane with it all.” 

She drew a long breath, but it did not relieve her. 
Her voice was as tense as before when she spoke again. 
The helmsman leaned to listen, for he could hardly hear. 

“ Then one day he died — Oh, that awful day ! I sat 
in my room with the curtains down. I couldn’t endure 
the sunlight. I pretended to be sick. I was numb 
with agony and yet I could do nothing. I couldn’t 
even send a rose to lay on his coffin. I couldn’t even 
speak his name. I could only lie there like a prisoner 
gagged and on the rack — to suffer — suffer ! ” 

The shadow of the sail covered the woman like a 
mantle. It was as if the man listening had turned away 
his face from her sacred passion. She was more com- 
posed when she spoke again. 

“Well, it wore itself out after a time. I got hungry 
and ate once more, though I did not suppose I ever 
should. I came down to my family a week later, a 
puzzle to them. They never thought to connect my 
illness with the death of an obscure machinist, and then 
in the same way I crept gradually back into society — 
back into the busy life of a popular young girl. But 
there was one place where no one ever entered. I 
never told anyone of this before. I tried to tell Dr. 
Sanborn about it once, but I felt he might not under- 


Mason Takes a Vacation 323 

stand ; I tell you because — because you can under- 
stand and because you may be influenced by it and 
understand your wife when she comes to you. These 
days come to many women at seventeen, and, though 
we can’t spare them out of our lives, it doesn’t mean dis- 
loyalty to our present ideals. I think you understand ? ” 

“Very well, indeed,” he said. “I have such 
memories myself.” 

“ Then I resolved to be a physician. I felt that he 
would not have died if he had been treated properly ; 
the connection was obscure but powerful enough to 
consecrate me to the healing profession. Then I met 
Dr. Sanborn. I love him and I couldn’t live without 
him, but there is that figure back there — to have 
him and all that he means go out of my life would 
take part of my heart away.” Her voice had appeal 
in it. 

“You understand me ? It was all girlish and in- 
nocent, but it was my first passion, and I can’t spare it. 
Rose may have such a memory. It has nothing to do 
with to-day, with her present ideals. It is not dis- 
loyalty — it is ” 

“The love of love,” said Mason. “I thank you for 
your trust in me. Rose is what she is, not what she 
has been.” And then in perfect stillness the boat 
swung around and drifted toward the shore, where a 
ruby lantern was swinging. Isabel turned and her voice 
was tremulous with earnestness. 

“Warren, Rose loves you — not as she loved when a 
girl, but as a woman loves. I think I understand your 


3^4 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


hesitancy — and I say you are wrong. You need her 
and you will do her good. You will develop her.” 

“ She will suffer through me.” 

“ That’s a part of our development.” 

The boat was nearing the wharf, and Sanborn’s 
hearty voice came from the shore : 

“ See here ! Isn’t it pretty late for a pair of rheu- 
matic old folks to be out sailing ? It’s 9.30 o’clock.” 

“ The breeze failed us,” Isabel answered, as Mason 
took her hand to help her ashore. 

“ And the night was so beautiful,” said Mason. Be- 
fore she loosed his hand Isabel shook it hard and now 
Mason understood. He mailed the letter that night, 
and Rose held his future in her hand. 


CHAPTER XXV 


ROSE RECEIVES A LETTER 

Rose vi^ent directly from that storm in the city to the 
calm and apparent peace of the country, and it helped 
her to make a great discovery. She found every 
familiar thing had taken on a peculiar value — a literary 
and artistic value. It was all so reposeful, so secure. 
A red barn set against a gray-green wooded hillside was 
no longer commonplace. ‘‘ How pretty ! ” she thought ; 
“ I never noticed that before.” 

A little girl wrapped in a shawl was watching cattle 
in the field ; a dog sat near, his back to the misty 
drizzle. Rose saw it and put herself in the place of 
that child, chilled and blue of hand, with unfallen tears 
upon her cheeks. 

A crow flying by with ringing, rough cry made her 
blood leap. Some cattle streamed up a lane and over a 
hill ; their legs moving invisibly gave them a gliding 
motion like a vast centipede. Some mysterious charm 
seemed imparted to everything she saw, and, as the 
familiar lines of the hills began to loom against the 
sky, she became intolerably eager to see her father 
and the farm. She hoped it would be a sunny day, 
3*5 


326 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

but it was raining heavily when she got out at the 
station. 

He was there, the dear, sweet, old soul smiling, 
almost tearful. He had an umbrella and couldn’t 
return her hug; but he put his arm about her and 
hurried her to the carriage, and in a few moments they 
were spattering up the familiar road. 

Instantly it seemed as if she had never been away. 
She was a little girl again ; the horses shook their heads, 
impatient of the rain ; the pools in the road were green 
as liquid emerald, and were dimpled by the pelting 
drops. The wheels flung segments of mud into the air, 
but the horses drove ahead sullenly, almost desperately, 
unmindful of the splash and splatter. 

Rose took keen delight in it all. She had been shut 
away from nature so long, it seemed good to get back 
into even the stern mood of a May storm. The great, 
reeling masses of gray cloud delighted her, and the ring- 
ing cry of frogs seemed delicious orchestration. Every- 
thing was fresh, cold, almost harsh. How arid and 
artificial the city life seemed in the freshness of green 
fields ! 

It was a pleasure to return to the barnyard, to get 
back into the kitchen where her aunt was phlegmatically 
working away at supper-getting. She wiped her hands 
on her apron, and said “How-de-do!” as if Rose 
were a neighbor just dropped in for a call. 

The life all seemed heroically dull, but the coolness, 
repose, and sanity of nature was elemental, as if she had 
risen into the rainy sky or sunk into the depths of the 


Rose Receives a Letter 


327 


ocean. It was deathly still at times. And dark, dark 
and illimitable, and freshly sweet that first night shut 
down over the valley. 

She went to sleep with the soft roar of the falling rain 
near her window ; and the faint puffing in of the breeze 
brought to her the delicious smell of the rain-washed 
leaves, the acrid, pungent odor of poplars, the sweet 
smell of maples, the fragrance of rich loam — she knew 
them all. 

By force of contrast she thought of Mason and his 
life in the city. The roar of traffic : the thunder of 
great presses ; the nights at the opera or the theatre, all 
had enormous significance and value to her, but how 
remote it all was ! In the country the city seemed un- 
real ; in the city the country seemed impossible. 

She awoke at the cry of a jay in the maples, and then 
as she listened she heard a mourning-dove sob from the 
distance. Robins were laughing merrily, an oriole whis- 
tled once and flew away, and hark ! yes, a thrush was 
singing, sitting high in some tree-top, she knew. 

The rain was over; the valley was flooded with sun- 
shine. Oh, so beautiful ! — flooded with light like the 
love of God. She sprang up with joyous energy. Life’s 
problem was not without solution if she could enjoy — 
both city and country alike. 

Indeed her joy of the country seemed doubled by her 
winter in the city — each day on the valley was made 
marvellous by that storm on the lake. In the days 
which followed, rhymes formed in her mind upon sub- 
jects hitherto untouched by her literary perception. 


328 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

Things she had known all her life, familiar plants, 
flowers, trees, etc., seemed haloed all at once by a su- 
pernatural radiance. 

The clouds on the hills, the buzz of bees in the clover, 
the sabre swing of poplar-trees against the sky, moved 
her to song, and she wrote daily with marvellous ease. 
She flung herself prone on the bank by the spring, and 
strove to mix and be one with the wind and the trees. 
She thought of her childish crooning over Carl that day 
his head lay in her lap, and its significance came to her 
and voiced itself in music. 

She traced out every path wherein her feet had trod 
as a child, and the infinite suggestions and terror and 
high beauty of life and death came upon her. She seemed 
to summon up and analyze all her past, as if she were 
about to end one life and begin another. These wonder- 
ful moods and memories in some unaccountable way co- 
ordinated themselves in lines of verse, and the restless, 
vigorous heart of the girl felt the splendid peace which 
comes when the artist finds at last the form of art which 
is verily his. 

The body of her work grew, and she longed for 
Mason's opinion upon it, and yet she feared to send it, 
it seemed so different from other verse. At times she 
felt sure of its passionate and imaginative quality, and 
made up selections to send him, but ended always by 
putting them away again. 

She had his picture in her room, and sometimes she 
sat down to write with his sadly inscrutable face before 
her. She could see in it (as she studied it here in her 


Rose Receives a Letter 


329 


home) the lines of varied and restless thought which 
make up the face of one who largely comprehends 
American civilization in the light of experience. 

That face represented to her the highest type of intel- 
lectual manhood, and something more. It was refined 
and infinitely subtle compared with the simple, almost 
ox-like faces of the men about her. It was sad, too, as 
her father's face in repose was sad, but the sadness was 
different. There was patient, resigned sadness in her 
father's eyes and lips; in Mason's, bitter, rebellious, 
perhaps despairing sadness, and something else, too — 
youth taking hold upon the hopeless sorrow of the whole 
world. 

And yet she knew how sweetly those lips could smile, 
and she had known the gentleness and purity hid in those 
eyes. 

She thought less of his fine, erect bearing, and yet she 
liked to remember him as he walked down the street that 
day of the storm. He had physical power and dignity, 
but his face and eyes were etched in minutest detail upon 
her brain. The life companionship of such a man came 
to seem more and more impossible for her to attain to. 
The common little details of her life seemed to lower 
her. She fell back into inelegant habits and careless 
speech, and every time she realized these faults, they put 
Mason far off and high above her. Her verse lost its 
brilliancy, its buoyancy, and became dark and bitter at 
such times. 

Every day she hoped to hear from him. He had 
promised to write, and he had hinted at something very 


330 Rose of Butcher's Coolly 

important which he designed to put into his letter. She 
knew that she had no definite claim upon him, and yet 
her last letter had contained one question, not of any 
importance only as it gave him a chance to reply if he 
felt like it. 

Then the question came : “ What of my winter in 
the city ? What has it done for me ? Is not life as in- 
soluble as ever — success as far away as ever ? ” 

Could she live here in the country any easier because 
of her stay there ; did it not, in fact, make life harder ? 

It was in thinking about these things and Mason’s 
letter, which did not come, that her new-found rapture 
in nature began to cool down. She began to spend 
more time in her room, thinking of him, and wonder- 
ing what his attitude toward her really was. 

She had moments at last when his face seemed cyni- 
cally smiling at her. What did he care for an awkward 
country girl like her ? He pitied her, that was all. He 
wanted to help her, and had tried, and finding her dull, 
had given her up and forgotten her. He knew scores 
of beautiful women, actresses, artists, millionaires’ 
daughters ; it was absurd to suppose that a girl from 
the coolly could be of any special interest to him ; and 
to win his love, that was impossible. 

She had not the personal vanity which makes so many 
pretty and brainless women think themselves irresisti- 
ble to any man, and a fair return for any man’s name 
and fame. Her comeliness she made little of in the 
question. 

She hoped on week by week for a reply, but none 


Rose Receives a Letter 331 

came, and in her letters to Isabel she asked for news 
about “ all my friends,” meaning Mason especially. 

Isabel wrote, saying they had invited Mr. Mason up to 
stay a few days at their cottage, and that Elbert Harvey 
had asked after her, and couldn’t she come down ? 

By the middle of July she had begun to pass days 
without writing at all — and then the letter from Mason 
came ! John brought it to her with a smile : « Guess 
this must be a love-letter ; it’s a big one ! ” 

She took it from his hand, with a keen, swift pre- 
monition of its importance. It was indeed a heavy 
letter — almost a packet. 

She went to her room with it and took a seat by the 
window, quite deliberately, though her hands shook as she 
opened the envelope. Her senses seemed some way to 
acquire unnatural keenness, like a scared animal’s. She 
heard every voice about the barn-yard, and she felt the 
wind on her cheek like a live thing beating its slow 
wings. The letter opened simply : 

“ Dear Miss Dutcher : 

“ I must begin by asking pardon for not writing be- 
fore, but as a matter of fact I have not found this letter 
easy to compose. It represents a turning-point in my 
life, and contains an important decision, and I have 
never been less sure of my judgment than now. 

“ This letter may be considered an offer of mar- 
riage. It is well to say that now, and then all the 
things which come after, will be given their proper 
weight. Let me state the debit side of the account 


332 Rose of Dutcher^s Coolly 

first, and if you feel that it is too heavy you can put 
the letter down and write me a very short answer, and 
the matter will be ended. 

“ First, I say to you : whoso weds me weds sorrow. 
I do not promise to make you happy, though I hope my 
influence will not be always untoward. I cannot 
promise any of the things husbands are supposed to 
bring. I cannot promise a home. My own living is 
precarious, dependent upon my daily grind of newspaper 
work. For though I hope to achieve a success with my 
novel, successes with novels do not mean much money. 
I do not feel either that I shall ever be free from money 
cares ; luxury and I are to continue strangers. 

“I cannot promise to conform to your ways, nor to 
bend to your wishes, though I will try to do so. I 
cannot promise to assume cordial relations with your rel- 
atives, nor accept your friendships as binding upon me. 

“ I cannot promise to be faithful to you until death, 
but I shall be faithful so long as I fill the relation of 
husband to you. I shall not lead a double life, or con- 
ceal from you any change in my regard toward you. If 
at any time I find a woman whom I feel I should live 
with, rather than with you, I shall tell you of her with 
perfect frankness. I think I shall find you all-sufficient, 
but I do not know. Men and women change, grow 
weary of cares, of bonds, of duties. It may be that I 
shall become and continue the most devoted of husbands, 
but I cannot promise it. Long years of association de- 
velop intolerable traits in men and women very often. 

“ On the other hand, let me say I exact nothing from 


Rose Receives a Letter 


333 


you. I do not require you to cook for me, nor keep 
house for me. You are mistress of yourself; to come 
and go as you please, without question and without 
accounting to me. You are at liberty to cease your 
association with me at any time, and consider yourself 
perfectly free to leave me whenever any other man comes 
with power to make you happier than you are with me. 

“ I want you as comrade and lover, not as subject 
or servant, or unwilling wife. I do not claim any rights 
whatever over you. You can bear me children or not, just 
as you please. You are a human soul like myself, and I 
shall expect you to be as free and as sovereign as I, to 
follow any profession or to do any work which pleases 
you. It is but just to say that I have never been a 
man of loose habits. No woman has any claim upon 
me for deed or word. I have thought at various times 
that I could marry this woman or that woman, but I 
have never before made a proposition of marriage to any 
woman. 

“ I have written you in good, set terms what you may 
expect of me. I am not a demonstrative man by nature, 
and my training from childhood has made me saving of 
words of endearment. My love for you must be taken 
largely for granted after it is once stated, for I regard 
the word ‘ love ’ as a jewel not to be carelessly tossed 
from hand to hand. 

“Doubtlessly I shall make a dull companion — of 
that I cannot judge for myself. I have written frankly 
because I believed it would prejudice you in my favor. 
Had I believed otherwise, doubtless I should have written 


334 


Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly 

in terms of flattery and deceit, for of such is man when 
seeking woman in marriage.” 

This was characteristic of his speech ; she seemed to 
hear his voice as she read it. He must needs mock at 
himself somewhere even in his proposal. However, he 
ended in clearer tone. 

“ If you return an affirmative answer I shall be very 
happy to come up and spend the rest of my vacation at 
your father’s home — provided it is agreeable to you.” 

Rose sat rigidly still in her chair, her hands in her 
lap, holding the letter. 

It had come again, this question of marriage, and this 
time it appealed to her whole nature — to her intellectual 
part as well as to her material self; an offer of com- 
panionship uttered this time by a voice which had no 
tremor in it. 

How strange it all was ! How different from the 
other proposals she had received; apparently cold and 
legal, yet under the lines she felt something deep and 
manly and passionate, because she was only a coolly 
girl, and he was a man of the great intellectual world ; 
a man who changed public opinion by the power of his 
editorial pen. He was greater than that. In his pres- 
ence she felt as if he were a man of national reputation 
living quietly under an assumed name. 

A feeling of pride rose in her heart. Warren Mason 
had selected her from among the women of the world ! 
He loved her so much that he had written her this 
strange letter, which pleaded for her under its rigid 


Rose Receives a Letter 


33 S 


order of words. She held the letter to her lips as if to 
get at its most secret meaning, and then dropped it as if 
it were a husk. No matter what it said, she knew the 
spirit of the man to be grand and noble. 

She wrote a few lines, then fell again into thought 
upon the terms of his letter. She hardly comprehended 
the significance of its minor statements, so filled was she 
with the one great fact. She was poor, and unknown, 
and yet he had chosen her ! 

There was something sad in the letter, too — like his 
face it was inscrutable, intricate, but (she believed) noble 
in intention. The freedom of action which he claimed 
for himself did not trouble her, for she felt his love 
steady and strong beneath it. His word “ comrade ” 
pleased her, too. It seemed to be wholesome and sweet, 
and promised intellectual companionship never before 
possible to her. 

Oh, to be the wife of such a man ! to have his daily 
help and presence ; it was wonderful, it could not be 
true! Yet there lay the letter in her lap, and there the 
firm, calm, even signature. She rose to her feet and her 
heart dilated with joy, and her head was that of a newly 
crowned princess. Oh, the great splendid world out there I 

She took up her letter suddenly and went downstairs 
and out into the yard in search of her father. He was 
sitting by the bees, with dreamy eyes. He spent a great 
deal of his time there watching their ceaseless coming 
and going. 

‘‘ Father, I want you to hitch Kitty to the buggy 
for me.” 


336 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

“ Why, of course. Where are you goin’, Rose ? ” 

“ Fm going to the Siding to post a letter. Oh, pappa 
John!” she cried, suddenly, putting her arms round 
him, “ Fm going to be married.” 

John did not instantly comprehend her passion ; he 
was slower to move, but he said : 

“ Why, Rosie I When ? Who to ? ” 

“To a man in Chicago, Mr. Warren Mason, a great 
editor. Fm just writing to him to come.” 

John began to feel the solemnity of the thought. 

“ Does he live in Chicago ? ” 

“ Yes.” She understood his thought. “ But we’ll 
come and see you, summers, just the same, pappa John.” 

“ Well, Fll take the letter down.” 

“No, I must take it myself,” she said, smilingly, 
holding the letter behind her like a child. 

There was something fine in carrying the letter to the 
post-office herself. It seemed to hasten Warren’s com- 
ing. The spirited horse carried her at a steady trot up 
hill and down, and soon the railway track was in sight. 
The singing wires on their poles instructed her; why 
not telegraph her answer? The clerk might suspect 
Warren to be her lover, but what did she care now ? 
She mentally formed this message: 

“ Come up to-morrow if you can, please. Rose.” 

But as she approached the desk she shrank from hand- 
ing it in. It seemed too plainly a love-message. She 
mailed her letter in the post-office and fell to calculating 
when it would reach him. He could not possibly come 
till the second day, whereas if she telegraphed he might 


Rose Receives a Letter 


337 


arrive in the morning. This thought strengthened her 
resolution; going over to the window she placed the 
message firmly before the operator, who knew her and 
admired her deeply. 

“ Please send that at once, Mr. Bingham.” 

The operator smiled and bowed, and when he read 
the message he looked up at her keenly, but did not 
smile. 

“ Any answer ? ” he asked. 

“ No, probably not,” she replied. ‘‘ Will it go right 
out ? ” 

“ Immediately.” 

As she turned away to ride home her soul took wing. 
A marvellous elevation and peace came upon her. It was 
done. Life held more than promise now, it contained 
certainties. Her chosen one of Israel was coming ! 


CHAPTER XXVI 


MASON AS A LOVER 

The telegram came to Mason as he sat on the porch 
of the Herrick cottage. He read it, and his eyes smiled, 
but his feeling was not one of amusement. The signifi- 
cance of that impulsive message struck deep, and his 
blood responded to it as if it were the touch of a hand. 

It settled all doubt in his mind concerning Rose. 
She was as free and self-reliant as he thought her, the 
severe terms of his proposal had not repelled her, and 
yet that she loved him in a right human and very pas- 
sionate way did not seem to him possible. 

He had, also, other misgivings. He regretted that he 
had not delineated more fully in his letter the unlovely 
side of his character. “ She is young and beautiful,” he 
thought, “and will want to see life. She will value 
social affairs — I am done with them. She will want 
words of tender protestation, flattery perhaps, which I 
cannot give. 

“My habits are fixed. I like my silent pipe at night 
after dinner. I shall undoubtedly get more and more 
disinclined to social duties as time goes on. 

“In ten years I shall be forty-eight years old, when 
338 


Mason as a Lover 


339 


she is just in her splendid June season. She will find 
the difference between our ages wider than now. She 
will be a wife. I can free her when she asks it, but I 
cannot give her back her buoyant girlhood. I can give 
her perception and comprehension of the world and of 
life, but I cannot make her young again. I may die 
after a few years, leaving her a mother with a hazardous 
future. Then she will be doubly cursed. 

“ Again, this marriage may ruin and interrupt her ca- 
reer. With some women marriage, especially maternity, 
seems to take away their power as artists, and to turn 
them into cooks and nurses j meritorious vocations of 
course, but ” 

All night long he alternately mused and dozed upon 
the problem. He roused up at early daylight with a 
feeling of doom upon him. He had made a mistake. 
He was not fitted to be a husband — he was a poor thing, 
at best, who had not had energy enough to get out of a 
groove nor to demand adequate pay for grinding in his 
groove. He lacked “ push,” and had dreamed away the 
best years of his life, at least such parts of the years as 
he had saved from the merciless drive of his paper. He 
was pulp, squeezed dry. 

He groaned, and a curse came upon his lips, and his 
forehead knit into a tangle of deep lines. His paper 
had used him. It had sucked the blood of his heart. 
The creative energy of his brain had gone into the im- 
personal columns of the editorial page — to what end ? 
To the end that the Evening Star Publishing Company 
should be rated high in Bradstreet. Had any human 


340 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

being been made better by anything he had written in 
those columns ? Politics ? Good God ! he had sold his 
soul, his blood, the grace of his limbs, the suppleness of 
his joints, the bloom of his enthusiasms, to put this or 
that damned party into power. 

And now, when a beautiful young woman, singing her 
way to fame, had sent for him, he must go to her, cyni- 
cal, thin-haired, stiff in joints, bent in shoulders, and reek- 
ing with the smell of office life and, worst of all, worked 
out, his novel not yet written, and his enthusiasm turned 
to indifference and despair. 

The problem of the age that morning m^e him sav- 
age. He looked out of the window at the farm-houses 
gleaming in the early light, at the smoke curling up into 
the still air, at the men going to milk the cows. 

“ The damn fools ! ” he said in his heart. “ They 
don’t know enough to vegetate any more than I had sense 
to know I was becoming a machirie. Rot and rot ! So 
wefgo like leaves to the muck-heap.’j The porter rushed 
in awd shook him. 

“ Almos’ to Bluff Siding, sah.” 

This put a little resolution into his blood, and he 
dressed rapidly, with little thought for anything else. 
Once or twice he looked out at the misty blue hills, 
cool and fresh with recent rains. As the porter came 
to get his grip a few minutes later. Mason wondered 
how he should meet his Rose, with a hand-shake or a 
kiss ? How would she meet him ? 

As the train slowed down he saw her at the platform. 
She sat in a carriage waiting for him. A sudden flash- 


Mason as a Lover 


341 


ing thought lit his brain : “ There sits my wife ! ” It 
startled him. The tremendous significance of that 
phrase made his brain dizzy for a moment. 

She was trimly dressed, he noticed, as he came to- 
ward her, and she held her horse firmly — he liked her 
for that, it showed self-mastery. As for him, he felt 
more uncertainty of footing than ever before in his life, 
and tried to throw off the stoop in his shoulders. 

As he came forward, she flushed, but her steady eyes 
met his unwaveringly. He looked into their clear 
obscurity of depth, wherein were purity and all un- 
worldly womanly ways. 

She held out her hand, firm and strong, and he took 
it in his. Outwardly it was merely a friendly greeting, 
yet something subtler than light came from her to him. 
He did not speak for an instant, then he said : 

“ This is good of you ! I did not expect this great 
pleasure.” 

Her voice trembled as she said : 

“ I wanted to be the first to greet you, and besides, 
pappa wouldn’t know you.” 

He smiled for the first time. 

“That’s true. But it’s very early — quite in the 
small hours.” 

“ Oh, that’s nothing ; I’m a farmer’s girl, you know. 
But put your valise in, we must be off.” 

How strong and supple she looked ! and how be- 
coming her silk waist and straw hat ! She could drive, 
too. Someway she seemed quite another sort of person 
here in her own land and in her own carriage. She was 


342 Rose of Butcher s Coolly 

so much more composed. “ She has imagination,” he 
repeated to himself. 

They turned into the road before he spoke again. 

“ So this is your ‘ coolly ’ ? ” 

“No, this is our valley. The coolly is over there 
where you see that cloud shadow sliding down.” 

He looked about slowly at the hills and fields. 

“ It’s very fine ; much finer than Oconomowoc and 
Geneva.” 

“We like it — pappa and I.” 

They were both talking around the bush, as the say- 
ing goes, but he finally said : 

“ I was very glad to receive your telegram. Am I to 
take it as an affirmative answer ? ” 

She said with effort : 

“ I wanted you to see how poor and humble we all 
are before — before I ” 

He studied her profile. Her lips quivered, and a tear 
glistened through the veil. 

“ On my part,” he said, “ I regretted that I did not 
further set forth my general cussedness and unde- 
sirability. — How well you drive ! ” he said, by way 
of relieving the stress of the moment. 

He took command now, and there were no more 
tender allusions. He sniffed the smell of the grass and 
the wayside trees, and remarked upon the cattle, and 
inquired the names of several birds whose notes reached 
across the field. 

“Do you know. I’m no wild lover of the country, 
and I don’t admire the country people unreservedly. 


Mason as a Lover 


343 


There are exceptions, of course — but my experience 
with them has not been such as to make them heroic 
sufferers, as the new school of fiction sets ^em forth. 
They are squalid enough and poor enough, heaven 
knows, but it is the squalor of piracy — they do as well 
as I should under the same circumstances, no doubt.” 

Rose looked at him narrowly, as if to find his real 
thought. He stopped abruptly at her glance. 

“ I beg your pardon for boring you ; but these dis- 
agreeable phases of my character should be known to 
you. Pm full of whims and notions, you'll find.” 

She looked away and a moment later said : ‘‘ There 

is our farm ; that house in the grove is ours.” 

Cattle I hate, so I hope your father will not expect 
me to be interested in stock.” 

This was the first time he had mentioned her father, 
and it moved her unaccountably. It would be so dread- 
ful if he should not understand her father. His per- 
verse attitude toward her and toward the country had 
brought her from exalted singleness of emotion down to 
a complexity of questionings and forebodings. 

As they whirled into the yard Mason saw a new 
house of the ambitious pork-pie order, standing in a 
fairly well-kept sward, with a background of barns, 
corn-cribs, pigsties, and beehives. A well-to-do farm- 
stead of the more fortunate sort, and the thought that 
the man coming out of the barn to meet them was to be 
his father-in-law struck him like a gust of barn-yard air. 
Really could it be that he had made this decision ? 

As the man came nearer he appeared a strong-armed. 


344 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

gentle-faced farmer of sixty. His eyes were timid, 
almost appealing. His throat was brown and wrinkled 
as leather. His chin-beard was a faded yellow-gray, 
and his hands were nobbed and crooked in the fingers. 
He peered at Mason through dimmed eyes. 

“ Father,” said Rose, and her voice trembled a little, 
“ this is Mr. Mason.” 

John Butcher put up his hand heartily. 

“ How do you do, sir ? ” His timid smile touched 
Mason, but there was something else in the man which 
made him return the hand-clasp. 

“ I am glad to see you Mr. Butcher,” he said, and 
his tone was so genuine it brought a gush of tears to 
the daughter’s eyes. Her lover understood her father 
after all. 

“ Won’t you ’light out, sir ? ” continued John, with 
elaborate hospitality. 

“Well, yes, I think I will,” said Mason, and Rose’s 
spirits shook off their cowls. 

Suddenly she heard every bird singing, the thrush in 
the poplar top, the catbirds in the willows, the robin on 
the lawn ; the sun flooded the world with magical 
splendor. It was morning in the world and morning in 
her life, and her lover was walking up the path by her 
side. 

It was splendid beyond belief to show him to his 
room, to bring him water and towels and to say from 
the doorway, with a smile : 

“ Breakfast is ready ! ” 

The picture that she made lingered pleasantly on 


Mason as a Lover 


345 

Mason’s interior eye. She was so supple of form and 
so radiant of color, and so palpitant with timid joy. 

She was alone at the table when he came in. She 
explained as she showed him his seat, “Father and my 
aunt had breakfast long ago.” 

Mrs. Diehl brought the coffee in and bowed awk- 
wardly to Mason. The whole thing seemed like a 
scene in a play to him. It was charming, all the same, 
to sit alone at the table with such a gid; it was just the 
least bit exciting. His hand shook a little, he noticed. 

As he took his cup of coffee from her he said, 
whimsically : 

“ I expect to wake up soon.” 

“ Does it seem like a dream to you too ? ” 

“Well, it isn’t my every-day life, I must confess. I 
keep expecting to hear the trained quartette in the wings.” 

To her he seemed handsomer and more refined than 
in the city. He seemed simpler, too, though he was 
still complex enough to keep her wondering. The slope 
of his shoulders and the poise of his head were splendid 
to her. It could not be possible that he was here to see 
her; to be served by her; to spend the days with her; 
to be her husband if she should say so. 

And yet she retained her dignity. She did not be- 
come silly nor hysterical as a lesser woman might have 
done. She was tremulous with happiness and wonder, 
but she sat before him mistress of her hands and voice. 
Her very laughter pleased him ; if she had giggled — 
heavens, if she had giggled ! 

John for his part went busily, apparently calmly. 


34^ Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

about his work. Mason was pleased at that j it showed 
astonishing reserve in the man. 

Again that keen sweet feeling of companionship — 
wifehood — came to Rose as they walked out side by 
side into the parlor. He had come to her; that was the 
marvellous thing ! She was doing wifely things for him ; 
it was all more intimate, more splendid than she thought ! 

They took seats in the “ best room ” and faced each 
other. It was their most potential moment. Breakfast 
was eaten and the day was before them, and an under- 
standing was necessary. 

“ Now, I can’t allow you to be hasty,” Mason said. 
“ ril tell you what I think you had better do ; defer 
your answer until two weeks from to-day, when I shall 
return to the city. That will give us time to talk the 
matter over, and it will give you time to repent.” 

A little shadow fell over her and the sunlight was not 
quite so brilliant. The incomprehensible nature of the 
man came to her again, and he seemed old, old as a 
granite crag, beyond song, beyond love, beyond hope. 

Then he smiled : “Well now Pm ready to go see the 
sights ; any caves, any rocking bowlders, any water- 
tower ? ” 

She took up the cue for gayety : “ No, but I might 
take you to see the cemetery, that is an appropriate 
Sunday walk ; all the young people walk there.” 

“ The cemetery ! No, thank you. Pm a believer in 
crematories. Pll tell you what we’ll do. After you’ve 
hung out the wash-boiler to dry we’ll go down under 
the trees, and Pll listen to some of your verse. Now, 


Mason as a Lover 


347 

that is a tremendous concession on my part. I hope 
you value it to the full.” 

“ I do, indeed.” 

‘‘You do? good! We’ll put the matter in move- 
ment at once.” 

“ The dew is still on the grass,” she said, warningly. 

“ So it is. I thank you for remembering my growing 
infirmities. Well, let’s go out and see the pigs. As I 
told you, I hate cattle and swine, they act out so frankly 
the secret vices of man — but, never mind. I’ll go out 
and have it out with your father.” 

The moment he began in that tone she was helpless. 

They moved out into the barn-yard, but John was not 
in sight. 

“ I guess he’s with his bees,” Rose said. “ He likes 
to sit out there and watch them when he is resting.” 

They peered over the fence, and their eyes took in a 
picture they will never forget while they live. John 
Dutcher sat before his bees in the ripe bloom of the 
grass, his head bowed in his hands. He was crying for 
his lost daughter. 

There came a gripping pain in the girl’s throat, the 
hot tears rushed to her eyes, and she cried, in a voice of 
remorseful agony : 

“ Father — pappa John I ” 

He lifted his head and looked at her, his eyes dim 
with tears, his lips quivering. 

The girl rushed through the gate, and Mason turned 
and walked away like a man discovered thieving from 
an altar. ^ 


CONCLUSION 

THE WIND IN THE TREE-TOPS 

Mason freshened magically under Rose’s sweet and 
self-contained companionship. She did not coddle him, 
nor bore him by attentions, but seemed to do the right 
thing instinctively. She assumed command over him in 
certain ways — that is, she insisted on his taking long 
walks and drives with her — though he sturdily refused 
to climb hills. “ Bring me to them gradually,” he said, 
“ for I am Egyptian.” 

One Sunday afternoon he consented to try an easy 
one and they started out — she in radiant, laughing ex- 
ultation, he in pretended dark foreboding of the outcome. 

She led the way with swift, steady swing of skirts, her 
smiling face a challenge to him when he fell too far 
behind. He never ceased to admire her powerful, 
decisive movement and her radiant color, though he said 
nothing about it to her. She stopped at a spring which 
came silently to light beneath an overhanging sandstone. 
There was no dipper, and Rose, with a new daring, 
dropped on her knees and dipped some of the cool, 
sweet water in her palm. 

“ Do you thirst. Sir Guy ? ” 

348 


The Wind in the Tree-tops 349 

He kneeled beside her with a comical groan, and 
drank from her hand. 

“ Thanks, a sweeter draught from fairer hand was 
never quafted.” 

Rose was highly elated at the success of her trick. 
She dipped another palm full. He shook his head. 

“ With your permission Til use my hat brim.” 

“ ril show you how to do it,” she said. And fling- 
ing herself down full length on the ground, and resting 
her palms on two flat stones, she drank from the pool, 
like an Indian. 

‘‘ There ! ” she cried, triumphantly. “ That’s the 
way to drink. All my life I’ve done this way at this 
spring — when there wasn’t anyone to see.” 

Mason felt a wild charm in this. Most women he 
knew would have tumbled to pieces doing such a thing, 
while Rose sprang up a little flushed, but with no other 
sign of exertion. 

There was something primeval, elemental, in being 
thus led by a beautiful woman through coverts of ferns 
and hazel. Every shadow seemed to wash away some 
stain or scar of the city’s strife. He grew younger. 

“ I almost like this sort of thing,” he said. 

They came at last to the smooth slope of the peak 
where grass stood tall in bunches on a gravelly soil, and 
wild flowers of unusual kinds grew. As they mounted 
now, the landscape broke over the tree-tops, and the 
valleys curved away into silent blue mist. 

On every side low wooded ridges lay, with farms 
spread like rugs half-way up their deep green clearings. 


350 Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 

On the farther slope a pasture came nearly to the sum- 
mit, and the tinkle of a bell among the bushes sounded 
a pastoral note. A field of wild grasses just to the left 
glowed with a beautiful pink-purple bloom. 

“ Isn’t it beautiful ? ” asked Rose. 

Mason dropped full length on the grass before replying. 

“Yes, it is lovely — perfectly pastoral. Worthy a 
poem.” 

“ I’ve written three, right on this spot,” she said, a 
little shyly. 

He seemed interested. 

“ Have you ? Haven’t one with you ? ” 

“ No.” 

“Always go armed. Now here’s a golden opportu- 
nity gone to waste.” 

She smiled, archly. 

“ I can repeat one though.” 

“ Can you ? Better yet ! Begin ! ” 

She sat down near him, but not too near, and began, 
in a soft, hesitant voice, to repeat a poem which was 
full cf feminine sadness and wistfulness. As she went 
on Mason turned his face toward her, and her eyes fell 
and her voice faltered. 

“ That’s glorious ! ” he said. “ Go on.” 

The wind swept up the slope and through the lean- 
ing white bodies of the birches with a sadness like 
the poem. The wild barley bowed and streamed in the 
wind like an old man’s beard ; the poem struck deep 
into secret moods, incommunicable in words — and 
music came to carry the words. The girl’s eyes were 


The Wind in the Tree-tops 351 

sweet and serious, and the lovely lines of her lips shifted 
and wavered. 

Mason suddenly reached out and took her right hand. 
Her voice died out and her eyes met his. He drew 
her hand toward him and laid his lips upon her strong 
white wrist. 

“ You’re a poet,” he said. “ You have found your 
voice, and I — I love you because you are a poet and 
because you are a beautiful woman.” 

At the touch of his bearded lips upon her arm, the 
whole world reshaped itself for Rose. His praise of her 
poem — her victory over him as a critic was great, but 
his final words drowned in fierce light the flame of her 
art’s enthusiasm. 

Once more a man’s voice came to her, filled with 
entreaty and command, but in this case she had no 
reservations. It was well, it was inevitable, and it was 
glorious to set her face toward wifehood and fame with 
such a man as companion, friend, and lover. 

5 |« 5 !« 5 |« ;(« ^ ^ 

A few weeks later. Mason came down from his room 
with a grim look on his face. He stepped out on the 
porch and stood there feeling the change in the air. 
The wind was from the north, cool and dry. The sky 
was softened by a thin white veil of mist. The wood- 
pecker was uttering a new note. The air was touched 
with the faint smell of wood-smoke. The orioles and 
robins were silent, the crickets sounding the passing of 
the day. The summer was over. 

Rose came out, and he put his arm about her. 


35 ^ 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


“ Hark ! ” he commanded. “ Do you hear the wind 
in the tree-tops ? It brings me the roar of the city this 
morning. I hear the grind of cars, the roar of mills, 
the throb of presses ; the city calls me and I must go. 
My vacation is over. I must say good-by to-night. ” 

“ It’s very beautiful up here now,” she said, a little 
wistfully. “The sumac is beginning to turn and the 
hills are like jewels.” 

“ Oh, yes, it is beautiful,” he said, smiling a little. 
“ But down there life is — infinite novelty, ceaseless 
change. As you love the country, so I love the city. 
It is a greater pleasure to me to meet men than trees, 
and concerts are more than winds in the pines. Artist 
souls, poets, people who do and think, are there, and so 
I must go.” 

“ When shall I go ? ” she asked. 

“ When you please,” he said. “ I have no commands. 
You are perfectly free to do as you like. I need you 
always now.” 

“ Then I will go to-night,” she said, firmly. 

He turned his eyes upon her in a look she never 
forgot. 

“ My dearest girl, do you realize what you are doing ? 
Do you realize that you are entering upon a dubious 
line of action — that you are inviting pain and sorrow 
and care, that you are leaving girlhood and leisure 
behind — that you are entering gates that never swing 
outward ? Do you know this — once more and finally, 
do you realize all this ? ” 

She stood tall before him stronger than he ; that he 


353 


The Wind in the Tree-tops 

acknowledged. She knew him at last since that touch 
of his lips to her arm, since that look in his eyes — and 
she said : ‘‘ I realize it all, and I choose it.” 

The janitor of the Berkley flats stood transfixed as he 
became aware of a young woman just behind Mason, 
but being natively polite he concealed his astonishment 
by bowing low. 

“ Williams,” said Mason with an air of apology, “ I 
have gone and done it. This is my wife,” (Williams 
bowed definitely to Rose). “ I promise not to do it again 
if you won’t mind — ‘ and if you keep it from the fellows 
for a day or two.” 

“ Cehtinly not, sah, of co’se not, Misto Mason.” 

“ And send Annie up ; she may be of some use to 
Mrs. Mason.” 

“ All right, sah. You’ll find everything in ohder, 
sah.” 

As Rose went up the stairway she heard Williams 
chuckle softly. 

At the door Mason turned, dangling a key on his 
finger. 

“ Mistress of my heart — here is the key to my poor 
home. Therewith I surrender my dominion like 
Boabdil the Moor.” 

Rose took the key gently, for under Mason’s playful 
words ran a perceptible note of sadness. He was sur- 
rendering a part of his freedom to her — the sacrifices 
were not all on her side. Without a word she turned 
the key in the lock and he threw the door open. 

ZA 


354 


Rose of Butcher’s Coolly 


“ Enter, my ‘ bread-dispenser.’ ” 

She gave a little cry of surprise. The apartment, 
glowing with light and with warmth, reflected Mason’s 
mind as in a magic mirror. Books — every where books, 
that was the first impression. Next the pictures and odd 
pieces of sculpture claimed her interest, and photographs 
of poets, actors, and musicians, and then more books and 
easy chairs and pipes. 

After another keen glance Rose uttered her pleasure. 
“ Oh, how cozy ! It is ever so much more interesting 
and lovely than I imagined it.” 

“ Thanks, dreadfully,” replied Mason, gloomily. “ I 
took years to get these things together.” 

She came and put her hand in his. “ And you 
thought I’d change all this ! ” she softly said in 
reproach. 

As they took seats before the fire Mason settled 
down into his favorite arm-chair with a sigh of content ; 
“ Home once more ! ” Then he looked up at Rose and 
replied to her question. “ Well, as we faced Judge 
Wilson I had that fear, but as I sit here it seems as if 
neither my life nor this room could ever change ; it seems 
as if you were merely a visitor. Now that is honest, 
but let me tell you something further, my lady.” He 
took her hand between his strong smooth palms. “ I 
used to be lonely here, but when I look at you I know 
I shall never be lonely again.” 


WORKS BY 


GILBERT PARKER. 


16mo. Cloth. Each, $1.25. 


Pierre and his People. 

When Valmond Came to Pontiac. 

An Adventurer of the North. 

A Romany of the Snows. 
A Lover’s Diary. 


** He has the instinct of the thing : his narrative has dis- 
tinction, his characters and incidents have the picturesque 
quality, and he has the sense for the scale of character- 
drawing demanded by romance, hitting the happy mean 
between lay figures and over-analyzed ‘souls.’” 

— Sf, James Gazette, 

“Stories happily conceived and finely executed. There 
is strength and genius in Mr. Parker’s style.” 

— Daily Telegraphy London. 


PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 


AT YOU-ALL’S HOUSE. 

\ 

A MISSOURI NATURE STORY. 

By JAMES NEWTON BASKETT, 

Author of **Tht Story of the Birds f etc. 
INTRODUCTION BY HAMILTON W. MABIE. 

12mo. Cloth, gilt top. $1.50. 


James Newton Basket! is a writer of no small promise. . . . 
He has insight, sympathy, profound and affectionate acquaintance 
with nature, and a strong grip upon the vital elements of human 
nature. ... In short, this book has vitality and human feeling, 
and it ought to be widely read.” — The TimeSy New York. 

“ The book is an idyl of the fields and a study of human char- 
acter as well ... a nature study whose completeness and in- 
sight shows that the author possesses the soul of the true artist.” 

— The Daily Eagle, Brooklyn. 

“ The tale is restful ... a simple story told admirably. . . . 
Insensibly in reading this charming tale one falls into the mood 
of the out-of-doors, and the story comes out of the rush of events 
as gratefully as a cool breeze into an over-heated room.” 

— The Courier, Buffalo. 

... ‘•'A man who can draw a boy is a big artist in my opinion. 
Few have done it successfully. One Missourian has done it be- 
fore, — Mark Twain in < Tom Sawyer,’ and James Barrie has done 
it in ‘Sentimental Tommy.’ Mr. Baskett’s boy ranks along 
after these famous boys, and that is something a man may be 
proud of having accomplished.” — The St. Louis Mirror. 


PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 



















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